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.