Thanks to Sonya Bearson for helping me find this article:  Hostages’ Pastor: ‘Remorse Is the Face of the Church’

Here are few quotes from the ex-hostages in the article:

“I’ve had sleepless nights, thinking of what we have caused the country. I am deeply sorry,” Yu Kyeong-sik said at a press conference.

“Remorse is the face of the church,” said Park Eun-jo, senior pastor of Saemmul Church. The Presbyterian congregation that sponsored the trip, in the Seoul suburb of Bundang, has a weekly attendance of about 5,000 people.

What exactly are they apologizing for? What did they do that was so wrong?

This is a strange age we’re living in – when we care more for animals than we do people, and terrorists don’t apologize, but missionaries have to.  Since when did the church become such a burden on society? Have we come to a point that we expect missionaries to apologize when the gospel they wield is subversive enough that terrorists find it threatening? We have come to a point where are more angry at the missionaries for being held hostage than the terrorists who held them hostage. How screwed up is that?

That’s like telling an abused woman that she had it coming. The church shouldn’t have to apologize, they should be the ones to have the government apologize for this same sentiment also expressed in the article:

After the hostages’ release, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told the Associated Press that the group plans to abduct more foreigners.

“We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful,” he said

Separation of church and state is fine, but know this, this one’s on the state. Nonviolence should never have to apologize to those who use violence. Just because there are cowards in the state, doesn’t mean the missionaries have to apologize. C’mon South Korea, don’t boast about missionaries if you’re not willing to send them out. The Taliban is not entitled to perpetuate violence, nor should we, for fear of death, allow them to think that they can.

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The series continues with Virtue 5.

Original author: Eric Foley.

Virtue 5: Preparing and eating meals together

Parents in the United States today are spending 40% less time with their children than parents in the US did thirty years ago. 40% less!

A lot of that lost time is due to the fact that American parents aren’t eating together with their children nearly as often these days. In fact, American families now eat together less than five meals a week. That means that there are at least two days a week when American families don’t eat even a single meal together.

How many meals do you eat together with your family each week? How about the families in your congregation? How often do they eat together each day?

My own experience suggests that these statistics about American families in general certainly seem accurate in the case of Korean American families in particular. Korean American parents often must work twelve to fifteen hour days six or seven days a week, which makes having dinner with their children almost impossible. And Korean American children are so involved with sports and after school activities that even if their parents are at home for dinner, they frequently are not.

Some Korean Americans may look at these statistics as simply inevitable. But there are two things that make these statistics particularly sad:

1. Research has demonstrated conclusively that the less a family eats together, the greater the likelihood that the children in that family will experience bad grades, poor nutrition, health problems, and troubled relationships with their peers. Likewise, research shows that the more a family eats together, the greater the likelihood that the children in that family will experience good grades, good nutrition, good health, and good relationships with their peers. In other words, the amount of time we eat together with our children determines more about their success in life than the amount of money we make or even how much time they’re spending in youth group!

2. We would hope that the Korean American church could be one place where Korean American families are able to share meals together. After all, Korean American churches do a wonderful job providing food every Sunday—and often during the week as well! But despite the joy I feel every time I attend a Sunday lunch at a Korean church, there is often something very sad that happens at these meal times: Teenagers and young adults are frequently absent from the table. Very few times do I see a teenager eating with their parents during the Korean American church meal time. If teenagers do stay after church to eat the meal, they often do it in another room or away from the rest of their families. This means that the Sunday church meal becomes just one more meal that Korean American families don’t share together. Even morning prayer can make it challenging for Korean American moms to eat breakfast with their children.

The end result, tragically, is that Korean American churches may accidentally be adding to the problem of our Korean American families not eating together, rather than helping to solve the problem. And, as research has shown, the less a family eats together, the more problems children in that family are likely to have.

In what ways is your church helping and encouraging families to share meals together? In what ways are your church’s activities making it less likely for families to share meals together? Are there ways you can creatively modify those activities so that your church can make it possible for Korean American families to spend more time together around the table?

According to research, the end result would be Korean American children getting better grades, having better health, and enjoying better relationships with their peers. Now THAT would be a great accomplishment for a Korean American church youth group!

Of course, we would not want to focus on these things and neglect spiritual matters. But even though research hasn’t been done on the subject of how sharing meals together impacts children’s spiritual growth, we would probably be safe to say that the more frequently children eat meals with their parents, the more likely it is that their parents can help shape their spiritual life as well.

There is no doubt that the Korean American church is in an especially strategic position to be a force for either good or bad in this issue. That is why next month we’ll offer you specific suggestions and practical help on how you can draw upon traditional Korean Christian cultural practices to enable the Korean young people in your congregation to prepare and eat meals together with their families.

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When the news that the Korean missionary hostages were released in Afghanistan, I considered it to be good news.

When I heard the conditions upon which they were released, I considered it not as good.

I don’t know if it’s too early to write about this. And of course, it’s easy for me to write this–sitting in my plush chair in an air-conditioned room, well-fed, and middle-class– but it makes me wonder if I would’ve have made the same deal with the Taliban.

Release the hostages and I’ll take all the missionaries back. Oh, and here’s a cool $20 million to make sure that happens soon. That was the basic proposition and the deal that was met.

And check out this article, “Viewing the Hostage Crisis Through Game Theory”:

Experts in game theory emphasize that the best strategy to minimize terrorist threats is to leave a deep impression on terrorist organizations, making them believe they will pay dearly for taking hostages — that our country is unyielding on hostage issues.

As a Christian, I think the best way to send the message to terrorists is to say that our faith compels us to be witnesses (in Greek: martyrs) as well, but not of violence, but of love and peace. While we have gained 19 lives back, what is at stake is the greater impact of missionaries/aid workers to the nation of Afghanistan. Should we be relieved that the Taliban have returned those hostages then?

The world would have seen the end game of terrorism played out had those innocent hostages died at their hands, but we have succumbed to their threats. We could have said to them, you may take the lives of Christian missionaries, but they were willing to support, educate, and help your people – what have you done for anyone? We are the ultimate anti-terrorists because perfect love can cast out all fear.

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Of all the things that you don’t want to have lost in translation, this has to make the Top 10 list: “a declaration to end the Korean War just now”. Are you listening, Letterman?

For those who are keeping score, the Korean War (1950-1953) never actually ended, it was merely declared a truce with the cease-fire zone at the 38th degree parallel. Technically, that’s still a war with a long intermission.

U.S. President Bush and and South Korean President Roh seem to be missing each other in terms of what it takes to end a war. Bush says it all depends on Kim Jong Il’s desire to lay down his hopes of nuclear weapons. And it seems that North Korea is willing to let the inspectors in the door. Perhaps Kim is not as crazy as he used to be. Or maybe he just needs the aid that bad.

How does my Christian faith influence my views of politics, war, and nation-state? I know that the modern world would like to separate my faith from the equation, but I have to ask the questions: what is spiritually going on here? What is God’s will in this? and subsequently as we answer those questions, what can we do?

Is it possible that Walter Wink has a point when he talks about The Myth of Redemptive Violence?

In short, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods favour those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favour of the gods. The common people exist to perpetuate the advantage that the gods have conferred upon the king, the aristocracy, and the priesthood.

Religion exists to legitimate power and privilege. Life is combat. Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth. Ours is neither a perfect nor perfectible world; it is theatre of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes to the strong. Peace through war, security through strength: these are the core convictions that arise from this ancient historical religion, and they form the solid bedrock on which the Domination System is founded in every society.

When will Asian/Asian American Christians begin to engage in the politics of war and peace? Do we have some notion that if we simply let these things come to pass that we usher in the Apocalypse ourselves? Are we somehow collectively, yet subconsciously, waiting for the end of the world to come so we can hurry up and gain our reward? What’s wrong with this mentality?

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Here is Pastor Eric Foley’s follow-up to the last post.

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Virtue 4: Passionate, whole-being prayer, conclusion

In my last column, I wrote that we are raising a generation of 2.0’s who don’t know how to cry out to God. They can only whisper to God, and they don’t even seem to do this very often. Passionate, whole-body prayer, I claimed, is one of the most important Korean Christian virtues, and it is being lost with every passing year. How many 2.0’s do you know who pray passionately? How many 2.0’s do you know who regularly cry out to God?

This must change. That’s why in this column, I am recommending three practical steps that your church can implement to enable the Korean young people in your congregation to learn to pray passionately and with their whole bodies and hearts.

1. Keep the children in the Sunday service through the prayer time—and have the congregation cry out to God in two segments: the first in Korean, the second in English.

Children primarily learn about prayer from watching and imitating their parents. But think about what often happens in Korean congregations: the passionate, whole-being prayer happens when the children are out of the room! They are not in attendance at morning prayer services, and on Sunday mornings they are often in Sunday School during the main service times. As a result, they rarely see their parents crying out openly to God—and they never learn to imitate this behavior. By the time they are teenagers in American society, they come to associate passionate, whole-being prayer as just another weird thing their Korean parents do that Americans don’t.

That’s why this first recommendation is so important: It’s not practical to have young children attend morning prayer, but it is possible to keep the children in the Sunday service through the prayer time so that from a very young age they see their parents and other adults openly crying out to God in prayer—and they learn to do likewise.

This may mean moving the prayer time much earlier in the service so that children can participate and then be dismissed. But isn’t teaching our children how to pray much more important than maintaining the order of worship we’ve all become used to?

One other change is recommended, however: TWO brief prayer times should be done in each service, one after the other. In the first prayer time, congregation members should cry out to God in Korean, as usual. In the second prayer time, however, congregation members should cry out to God in English, even if they know very little English. Why? So that our children don’t associate passionate, whole-being prayer only with the Korean language. Since most 2.0’s will come to speak English as their main language, it is vital that they regularly see adults crying out to God in English; otherwise, they will stop praying this way when their Korean speaking diminishes.

Children should of course be encouraged by the pastor and their parents to cry out to God just like everyone else during the prayer time.

[Read more...]

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This is edition #3 of the Asian American Survey via YouTube. Hope you enjoy.

Japanese Relocation (h/t: John Lamb)

Average Asian 2 (h/t: DJ Chuang)

Kelly Tsai at Def Poetry (explicit language)

Yellow Rage at Def Poetry (explicit language)

“Why Do All The Asian Kids Sit Together In Math Class?”

Kinsmen: Indian American Jazz

“Just Because: (White Girls and Asian Girls)”

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Something a close friend, who is a worship leader, and I have been meditating upon and wrestling with is dynamic expression of worship. It is an exploratory exercise that reacts to a certain term I’ve heard my friend Peter Ong use to describe a great deal of worship I see in the church today: “worship karaoke” – where the band plays our favorite songs and we follow the words on the screen.

We have come to question the machine, that is to say, the industry of the Christian contemporary praise/worship distribution that licenses and markets this music to us. I don’t dislike all this wonderful artistry or musicianship, but the solutions that buying a “worship leader’s guide” has created new problems.

Ironically, the song, “Heart of Worship” by Matt Redman is a great example of this. The song was born under the circumstances where his pastor was discouraged when he saw that worship became too performance-oriented, and thus banned the band. “When the music fades/ and all is stripped away…”

Everyone was questioned as to what it was they brought for their offering – the musicians, the songwriters, the congregation. “I’ll bring you more than a song / for a song in itself is not what you have required…”

And in the midst of uncomfortable silences and new creativity, there was this return to worship, an acknowledgment that the music was secondary to the act of worship. “I’m sorry Lord for the thing I’ve made it / It’s all about you, Jesus”

When the “Heart of Worship” has been made into a cliche hit for years now, it can often have the opposite effect of the very spirit in which it was written. Familiarity, as has been said, can indeed breed contempt. And in the spirit of confession, I re-wrote the lyrics to that song to reflect how many of us at one time or another have felt during worship. [Read more...]

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