ninth

What reflections and connections can you make with this novel?

 

 

            As I read the novel, a lot of ideas about death flashed in my mind. How would it feel like when you are trapped and are about to be killed? How would it feel like when people look at you as a prey? How would it feel like to know that you are going be chopped into bits and pieces and people who killed you will eat you up? How would it feel like to know that a female is going where your jaw bone as a necklace?

 

            Personally, I would feel like crap. It feels bad enough to see someone dying but to know that you aren’t even going to be buried properly, it would suck.

 

            Since middle school I became more aware of ‘death.’ This one word consisting of 5 different letters scares everyone and personally I hate the word.

 

Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. Death.

 

One of the deaths that made me more conscience to ‘death’ was my grandpa’s death. He was the only grandpa that I knew and the only grandpa that I liked. He was my favorite grandpa because he told me a lot of things. He told me that it’s just as important to learn English as to learn Korean. So I did learn English and nowadays my Korean is fading because I don’t use it a lot. He told me over and over again not to smoke and drink as he smoked and drank. He said smoking and drinking were bad habits and I knew he was telling the truth because he died last year. My dad was his older son and my brother was busy studying in the states so I had to help out with funeral stuff and it sucked big time. I don’t want to know how I’ll handle my parents’ deaths.

 

            Anyway, as I read the Peace Child, I started to think about death. A few times, in the past, I was either close to dying or almost dead. Whenever I think of those experiences I want to shut down my brain and not think about them ever. Shutting down my brain would be quite dangerous to do but all those experiences are the ones that will stay in my memory forever like tattoos. Although I wish not to get haunted by those memories, I will be and I can’t do anything about it.

 

No one wants to die. 

eighth

How different is your modern culture from the Sawi tenants?

 

            In this posting, the Sawi culture that I’ll be talking about will be the original one, the one before the conversion to Christianity.

 

My culture and the Sawi culture are different. I seek chances to learn more about things I’m interested in, while Sawi seek chances to trick and kill people. I live in an apartment, while the Sawi live in tree houses. I eat food which FDA said it was safe to eat, while the Sawi eat each other. I seek peace, while the Sawi seek wars and violence.

 

Why? It is because I have different standards and perspectives compared to the Sawi. The Sawi think that treachery is an honorable thing to do and I disagree. My values, my needs, my thoughts and my life are so different from the Sawi that it is almost meaningless to compare and contrast.

 

seventh

How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?

 

 

            Dictionary.com says faith is belief that is not based on proof. I agree with Dictionary.com because a lot of my teachers said Dictionary.com is a reliable for looking up definitions.

 

If a person doesn’t have faith in anything at all, then the person is not a human because no one can be totally objective. But, people tend not to believe in things that are not based on proof. If something is not proven to be right, or correct, why should one believe the something?

                                               

Thank God, He gave us the ability to think and not become a bunch of idiots staring at the sky. So, after a long trail of thoughts, our ancestors were bored, wanted to know the truth, wanted to become smart, and thusly started what is known as science.

 

Dictionary.com says science is a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws.

 

Therefore, through science we were able to identify, describe, and name whatever we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The things we couldn’t see, hear, smell, taste, or touch were labeled as unidentified things, irrelevant, or non-existent.

 

My point is that we have become big cowards only assured when the actual proofs are presented. We are so caught up in the scientific methods and the habits of ruling out things that are not proven that we started to become paranoids. Instead of becoming more objective, we became diehard believers of science.

 

For example, when Korean researcher Hwang, Woo Suk lied to the entire world about the potentials of stem cells with his mastery of tweaking data, the entire world was praising jubilantly Hwang for his wonderful work until some people started to question Hwang and proved his work false. It would’ve been very interesting to see the world if Hwang’s treachery was kept unknown.

 

Every human being has faith. If not, then you are in a coma or your brain is dead. Those who are religious have faith in whatever they believe in. Those who aren’t religious have faith in science. Those who are neither the cases mentioned previously are in denial of the obvious.

sixth

5) What do you believe and why?

 

What do I believe…?

 

I believe that I’m an emasculated imbecile who likes to complain a lot. And thusly I also believe that God is the only way to salvation. 

 

I hated rules and still do. I hated to do things according to the rules. I hated to follow the common trend. Since childhood I wanted things in my way.

 

Everything that should be will be.

 

This was the idea that I used to motivate myself to do things. The majority of the things I did were stupid and not worth anything at all but I continued to do them. Instead of following the given rules, I substituted my own.

 

The biggest influence of this way of thinking was my big brother. In all the things I did, my brother was better at it. So, I came up with things that my brother couldn’t do: make new stuff. When I did things, I always tried to come up with different things and take alternative ways. Then, instead of comparing and competing myself to others, I wanted to form my own standard where I can do whatever I want and nobody will do anything about it.

           

I pretty much thought and did whatever I felt like doing until I met God. God sort of set a wall in front of me, a wall which I can never destroy, go through, or climb over. I tried to avoid the wall but then it was like I was trapped by the wall. I learned I was weak. I can do anything but not in front of God.

 

Thusly, I learned that I’m an emasculated imbecile who likes to complain a lot. And because of that, I believe that God is the only way to salvation. 

 

This is what I believe.

fifth

4. What does God expect us to do for other cultures and faiths?

 

            Answer: spread the gospel.

            Unless I’ve had false teachings about God in all the years attending to church and this school, which I strongly doubt, I’m very sure that God expects us to notify the ones who don’t know God about God.

            I have invited many people to come to church and worship God. Some did. Some didn’t. Most of the invitations I offered occurred during the period of time which I call it the-time-when-I-really-didn’t-believe-in-God-but-I-did. I wasn’t so sure about my faith so I was standing on the border of believing God and not believing God.

            As a child, I would work hard to bring friends to church so I get presents from my Sunday school teacher. The presents weren’t cool (pencils, erasers, pens, etc.) but as a kid I had this false hope of the better presents the next time I bring a friend (or two friends if you are skilled), triggered by the sweet talks of my Sunday school teacher. Growing up, I found out that people don’t automatically transform into Christians on the first step in the church building. Thusly, I didn’t and don’t want to force my friends or people that I know to come to church.

            I usually ask people one question, only one time. Do you want to go to church with me? If they say yes, I’m very excited for them to finally meet God. If not, oh well. Maybe I’ll later ask them again (I really don’t, however) or they’ll get other chances to experience God some day. But what if God only gave one chance for them to meet God and that was my question? I’ll ask Him when I see Him. 

fourth

5. What should society do for “uncivilized cultures” like the Sawi?

        

         This is a very interesting question. There are many things that people can do for the uncivilized but I don’t know what’s best.

         I’m taking Mr. Willoughby’s government class and it just popped into my head so I’d like to talk about governments for a bit. From what I learned, governments serve the purposes of stopping chaos and making people happy. Well, some governments were meant to make only the leader of the government happy. Anyway, the society created such thing like ‘government’ to bring order and peace. So I think the society should bring order and peace.

            My previous statement is very crude and I’ll elaborate more about it. There’s no doubt that today’s society is going through globalization. English has become the language that people should know or else they are treated as ones with low-knowledge. It may sound rude but it’s true. Even I, myself, though I really shouldn’t be doing this because I’m also not very great at English, do look down on people who cannot speak or aren’t as fluent with English as I am. Now that English has become the standard determining whether a person has the skill to survive in the society beyond his community and nation, one has to learn the language to get acknowledged or will be treated poorly, regardless if he/she is a brilliant mind.

         What do English and globalization have to do with society helping the uncivilized? We, humans, tend to go along with the flow or the major trend. If not, you are a minority. We are living in an era where English is the major trend which connects people and nations to globalize. In my previous post, I pointed out that missionaries approach to others to do something. That something may be anything, but my point is that because missionaries communicate and try to build a bridge between people, they are globalizing, in both big and small ways. In other words, missionaries can be described as globalizers (I didn’t have an exact way to express my thought so I made up a word). The attempts may either turn out to be successful or sorrowful but everyone in this world is part of the globalization. Connecting with new people from other countries is part of globalization so everyone in TCIS takes part.

         The globalization will eventually create Earth as a place where different kinds of people will be connected to at least one, which will be connected to at least one other kind of people, and the endless chain continues. The so-called ‘uncivilized’ will come in contact with the others and it will become ‘civilized.’ What if we are committing cultural destructions? Well it doesn’t matter because everyone in the world took a part in that cultural destruction, or globalization, in some way or the other.

         So here is my opinion: society should simply communicate with the uncivilized.

         Now I’m wondering why I wrote about governments and I honestly have no clue. I guess the governments should promote globalization and at the same time look for peace and do things that will satisfy people because every culture, including the uncivilized, have different perspectives and the difference will bring conflicts. Not everyone would be happy but that’s the way it is. We have to work and hope that the majority will be happy. 

Third

8. What do mission organizations do for these people?

 

         I don’t know about the general missionaries but I think that Christian mission organizations save people from destroying themselves, in contrast to the views that say they are culture-destroyers.

         There are groups of people that practice cannibalism as part of their tradition and they get into conflicts and wars because they eat other people. As the book, the Peace Child, tells the readers, tribes in Irian Jaya constantly battled against each other by targeting someone or a group of people from other tribe and luring one or them into a trap to kill and eat them.

         This, of course, is not good. It would be quite ironic and pointless in attempt to ‘protect’ a tradition that kills people, unless you are a cannibal. Thusly, I don’t see a problem with missionaries joining the ‘untouched ones’ and getting rid of the cannibalism, like Don Richardson said.

         My fellow classmate, Jin Hong Kim, said that Christianity is a profit-hungry commercialist trying to spread the Gospel everywhere, even if it is not wanted. I say that it is a profit-hungry commercialist and it is good one after all because there are many non-Christian missionaries and some of them are corrupt.

         When I was in the Midkiff Dorm, about 3 years ago, a missionary from a church visited our dorm. To be more accurate, they snuck into our dorm. The people weren’t from normal church. They were devil worshippers. Without permission they wrote in Korean saying that Jesus Christ is something (I won’t write it because it was very inappropriate) on a white board in the building. They bashed into students’ rooms without permission, commanded my friends to sit down because they were older, and they told us not to believe in Jesus Christ. When I found about the ‘missionary,’ I went to the rec room to get a pool stick. It was outrageous for the ‘missionary’ to sneak into our dorm and saying that Jesus Christ is a bad person and we should worship the devil and do whatever we want because we’re all going to die anyway, go to hell, and the whole salvation idea is fake. I threatened the missionary to leave, holding tightly on the pool stick. They did.

         I am sure that there are other missionaries with different purposes. I haven’t seen them but there might be Buddhist missionary, Islamic missionary, Gay/homosexual missionary, and many other missionaries. I don’t know what their purposes are but the people that visited our dorm a few years ago were clearly out of their mind. They were literally invading our dorm and forcing my dorm brothers to listen to their speeches. Then my fellow dorm brother reported to me. From movies, I learned that you can beat up intruders or trespassers. Also, my old friend Darin said people in Texas shoot down trespassers. Thus, I threatened them to leave or I’ll beat them up with the pool stick, which is very hard and will withstand a lot of force before breaking.

         Back to the subject, the blog question is asking what missionary organizations do to people. My answer is that Christians don’t make up all the missionary organizations and therefore the diverse type of missionaries would function to serve their purpose. In addition, I see Christian missionaries as people who help out the needy more than culture-destoryers.

         Yes, they certainly do ban things in a culture but they do it for a good cause. How can anyone blame the Christian missionaries stopping cannibalism, which causes bad, nasty diseases, population decrease, conflicts (sometimes wars), and moral depravity? I think the ones who criticize the missionaries should quit the absolute nuisance and start helping the needy. Many times I’m enraged by the critics because they can’t stop complaining over things they never do/can do, or things they are not good at.

 

 

         Oh by the way, a year after the first visit, the ‘devil worshippers’ visited us again. To welcome them, Alex Rim, Young Tae Seo, and I picked up lethal weapons. They quickly left. 

Second Entry

What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?

 

I don't think there is a set of given rules for everyone to follow in the confrontations with other cultures. People do things according to their thoughts and everyone have different thoughts. Thusly, each and every person would react differently in a given situation.

However, no matter what they believe in or don’t believe in anything at all, people should always respect the others, in my opinion. It is ironic for me to say this because a lot of times I do the opposite.

I try to be aware of the things that I’m going to say and what the others would think about the things I say.

Back to the point, I learned that being respectful is very important in societies, especially in Korea. An incident back in elementary school where I lied and spread false rumors about a friend to the extreme level taught me the lesson about paying respect to other’s ideas. The whole thing started with an argument over which game is better between Final Fantasy series and The Winning Eleven series. I, of course, was an extremist supporting The Winning Eleven because I liked soccer and the game was entertaining enough to keep me playing the game until my eyes hurt. Back then, I’ve never played any of Final Fantasy and was a fool for referring the Final Fantasy series as a bunch of boring games.

Both are really good games. It would be a lie to say either games suck.

Anyway, my friend never played the Winning Eleven at the time and we started to create fictional stories about each other to bash ourselves. Both my friend and I had a conference with the teacher to settle the issue. In the end, my friend ended up becoming a fan of The Winning Eleven and I ended up semi-worshipping Final Fantasy.

Now, we get together to play games every summer.

My experience doesn’t really relate the confrontations of other cultures and it also doesn’t really answer the question (sorry Mr. Radar) but from the incident I learned that I should control my stubbornness and pay respect to the other cultures because the other perspective might turn out to be good. Of course, I do have integrity with my beliefs and I wouldn’t go accepting all cultures/ideas of this world. 

First Entry

Q: What factors of your native culture have informed your religious world view? Explain the impact of these factors.   

I am a Christian. Yes, I'm a believer of Jesus Christ's teachings. And, my native culture didn't affect my religious belief much at all. In the past, I thought was a Christian because I was born in a Christian family. I've also seen thousands of people who claimed be Christians but they were merely hypocrites who did not know anything about Chrisitianity. Thusly, I didn't call myself as a Christian because I didn't know a lot about it and if I claimed to be a Christian without any understanding, I would also be a hypocrite. However, I didn’t care much about how other people behaved and the external influences regarding the questions of faith. And I still don't care much about other's faith.

I started my musical education back when I was 5 years old. My first piano teacher quit because I never practiced. But my mother kept on getting new teachers to continue my music lessons. As years passed, I eventually quit piano and joined the elementary school band as a clarinetist and an oboist. During the time in middle school band I learned to play the flute, the trombone, the saxophone, and the bassoon. By the time I was an eighth grader I was able to listen to a song to identify almost everything about it such as: the tempo, the key signature, the chord progression, and number of instruments used. I also had the ability to notate a score by listening. But, about a year ago, I started to have blackouts when playing the oboe, my primary instrument. My doctor said I had to stop playing the instrument because it had bad affects on my heart and my lungs. From that day, I had to quit playing the instrument that I’ve played for 5 years. 

Quitting the oboe had a great impact on my life. I lost 5 years of my life when the doctor said: stop playing the oboe. At the time, I didn’t call myself as a Christian but I believed that Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But I started to have doubts about Him. I cursed Him for taking away the result of 11 years of all my efforts on music. But then my mom pulled a 20 year old, dusty acoustic guitar from the garage. I started to play the guitar as if I was possessed by something, and I now can proudly say that in less than a year, I have reached a higher understanding about music with the guitar compared to the 11 years I’ve spent playing a variety of instruments. I started to understand what soul power was and other music stuff too. But, most importantly, I learned that if ‘sound’ is God’s breath, music is His language. 

I’m quite passionate about music. I firmly believe God didn’t give me the ability to quickly pick up various instruments for no reason. I don’t believe that He accidentally gave me the ears which Mr. Cho, who has perfect pitch, would like to steal and replace his if he had the chance to do so. I don’t believe that God randomly gave me the ability to make a tune instantaneously. I know that He has certain purpose with my abilities and I will use it to glorify Him. 

I’m a Christian.   

Oh, just in case if you are wondering why I don't care about other's beliefs is because it's really hard to deal with the problems in my life and my faith and I don't wish to run into issues concerning other's beliefs when my faith isn't that stable.

reflection on Hotel Rwanda

Watching this movie made me feel very dumbfound. The entire movie portrayed the massive genocide in Rwanda which 8000 people died daily. Organizations such as the UN didn't respond and solve the problem in Rwanda, while telling the globe that they are existing to keep peace. My first reaction to the horrors of the incident was thinking of the song 'Black Hole Sun' by Soundgarden. It seems it's always the world leaders who claim to be smarter than everyone else while they act based on a childish mind. I wish there was a 'Black Hole Sun' that would take away all the bad people to the abyss forever and bring peace.

However, although I think of all these ideas criticizing the world and ideas for preventing these such incidents, I don't see a picture that the world will be changed very much. These kinds of movies that show the wrongdoings of the world are numerous, influencing the people around the world. Nevertheless it is the world leaders who make the big choices, whether to cause big problems or not. Today, the world has turned to a war zone where politicians put one to sleep forever if causing troubles for them. For example, the craphead president bush is playing G.I.Joe with the American Army in Iraq. It's sometimes funny to see people criticize the leader they picked, too. Whatever, we have to live with these crapheads.

After I read about the incident in Rwanda, I felt a pang inside me. I felt a little bit of connection to the genocide at Rwanda because of the Korean War. Although I'm not from the generation that went through the Korean War, I was strongly influenced by the people from the war, such as my grandparents. I personally cannot understand people fighting against its own people. It's pretty dumb because Americans would go have a drink if they meet one another while Korean people cuss at one another if they're not from the same hometown. I just get angry at people who kill its own people. It's so dumb to kill someone and claim that you have power. All I can see from violence is nothing but blood and grief, not power. I hope all the ones who did such things stink and burn after they die. Another thing that I got mad about the whole incident was that the others who claimed to help their allies turned aside and got busy rescueing their own people only. Personally, I greatly loath backstabbers. It seems UN uses lies and its ties with other countries to avoid getting blamed on. It's always the grown ups who cause big troubles from stupid mistakes. What a shame that the world leaders are nothing but mindless brats with steel fists.

October

http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=352
October
by: Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost--
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Again, this is a poem by Robert Frost. I feel more connected to this poem than others because I was born in October. To me, the season autumn always gives me a sense of image where there is a vast grass land and tall mountains in the background. The chilly wind slowly threatens the lives of the nature, as the prelude to the deadly weather in the winter. From that image, I sense solitude and agony. It's not something to brag about but I have a solitary personality and I like spending time coming up with ideas to describe a place, nature, etc. This poem, strangely sounds extremely familiar to me as if I read it in the past, although I haven't. The agony comes up from no where and for no reason. This poem directly makes me see that image of the nature and although silent, peaceful, and harmonious, a strange feeling of strong hatred and pain rises in my mind. I don't know why but it just happens and it's the way it is. Many I'm one of the so-called Emos. Who knows. Anyhow, this poem sounds like as if it's about me, with the image of fall during October, clearly describing the nature of my personality with the sense of looking back the past.

stars

Stars

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

by Robert Frost
http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=126

To me, the poems by Robert Frost are like a basketball hoop for me. I'm not tall enough to reach the hoop, just like I'll never completely understand Frost's poems. However, Frost's poems are my favorite, or the only poems that I enjoy reading. Anyway, this poem, 'Stars' gives me an image of a person who admires the stars looking at the stars fading away in the early mornings. The first stanza gives a strong image of a dark sky sprinkled with countlessly many stars. It also gives a sense that the stars will remain the sky for eternity. Then, as the poem continues, the day starts to begin and the invincible stars fade away and disappear. Then, the bright stars become nothing but the white part of the sky in the daylight. I think this poem is talking about people's lives. Why? I don't know. I think that Frost was talking about humans as the stars and the process of stars fading away as the process of humans dying. Like when the stars are present, they are so bright. It seems as if they will stay in their place forever. However, as the dawn approaches, they disppear slowly but so suddenly that you'll never remember it existing in that place. The star is still in the universe but it's not visible to the eye, just like after someone dies, we tend to remember them but we eventually forget them.