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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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 Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:50 am Post subject: Re: re: |
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| seoulunitarian wrote: |
| ED209 wrote: |
| seoulunitarian wrote: |
Just because a person calls them self a Christian does not necessarily mean they are a Christian.
Peace |
What does? |
What they do. Christ said, "They (nonbelievers) will know you (bleivers) by your love."
Peace |
That's nice.
Guess I haven't met any true Christians yet.
What is love? or What is Christian love? |
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Gamecock
Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:01 am Post subject: |
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| I don't think it is the responsibility of a Korean church if there is a so-called barber shop nearby. Why would it be the fault of Korean church attendees? Are you saying there is a difference between Catholic and Buddhist Koreans as compared to the Protestant Evangelicals you are probably alluding to? |
I guess what I was alluding to in my initial post was not hypocrisy, which many people wrote about, but what moral issues are important to Korean Christians, important enough for them to confront in a public sense. I brought up evangelicals, because they are often the first to be vociferous in moral causes. If in the States an unabashed house of prostitution opened next to a Baptist church, you know the parishoners would be doing everything they could to either get it shut down, or to convert the employees working there. My example illustrates that I have never even heard a Korean Christian acknowledge the prostitution issue here. It's just a surprising difference. I've also never hear abortion talked about, but in the U.S. Evangelicals (and Catholics) are convinced it is mass murder and the holocaust of their generation.
I'm not saying I mind that Korean Christians aren't the same as American Christians, I'm just curious as to what are the important moral issues in their world. |
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markhan
Joined: 02 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| Gamecock wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I don't think it is the responsibility of a Korean church if there is a so-called barber shop nearby. Why would it be the fault of Korean church attendees? Are you saying there is a difference between Catholic and Buddhist Koreans as compared to the Protestant Evangelicals you are probably alluding to? |
I guess what I was alluding to in my initial post was not hypocrisy, which many people wrote about, but what moral issues are important to Korean Christians, important enough for them to confront in a public sense. I brought up evangelicals, because they are often the first to be vociferous in moral causes. If in the States an unabashed house of prostitution opened next to a Baptist church, you know the parishoners would be doing everything they could to either get it shut down, or to convert the employees working there. My example illustrates that I have never even heard a Korean Christian acknowledge the prostitution issue here. It's just a surprising difference. I've also never hear abortion talked about, but in the U.S. Evangelicals (and Catholics) are convinced it is mass murder and the holocaust of their generation.
I'm not saying I mind that Korean Christians aren't the same as American Christians, I'm just curious as to what are the important moral issues in their world. |
Important moral issue is to believe in Jesus and go to heaven after they die. Which applies to all the Christians in the world.
I assume there are many French catholic but they neverthless create abortion pill, and you see many prostitutes in Netherland but I don't think Dutch Christians demonstrate against that either.
In fact, I think it is US Christians who stand apart when it comes to "Holier than Thou" attitude. I mean you rarely hear European or Asian leaders preaching "Truthiness" |
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seoulunitarian
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 6:54 am Post subject: Re: re: |
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| ED209 wrote: |
| seoulunitarian wrote: |
| ED209 wrote: |
| seoulunitarian wrote: |
Just because a person calls them self a Christian does not necessarily mean they are a Christian.
Peace |
What does? |
What they do. Christ said, "They (nonbelievers) will know you (bleivers) by your love."
Peace |
That's nice.
Guess I haven't met any true Christians yet.
What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Perhaps not. And, I don't know. I'm not Christian~
Peace |
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trinity24651
Joined: 05 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:50 am Post subject: |
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| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. |
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Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Location: the crib
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 10:17 am Post subject: Re: re: |
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| ED209 wrote: |
| Guess I haven't met any true Christians yet. |
Amen, my brother. I feel the same way. All these people telling each other that someone else is not a Christian, and I look at both of them and think neither one is. Basically, religious people are always telling other people under their umbrella that they are not 'true believers'. It's called the no true Scot fallacy.
| Quote: |
| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Part of a longer article, found here.
| Quote: |
A key difference in understanding the meaning of agape is to recognize that our culture is centered on the individual, whereas ancient Biblical society (and 70% of societies today) are group-centered. What is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape it refers to the "value of group attachment and group bonding" [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196]. Agape is not an exchange on a personal level and "will have little to do with feelings of affection, sentiments of fondness, and warm, glowing affinity." It is a gift that puts the group first.
With that in mind, what of the passage which tells us to "Love your enemies"? How is this reconciled with places where Jesus calls the Pharisees names, or Peter "Satan"? How is it reconciled with where Paul wishes emasculation on his Galatian opponents (Gal. 5) and shames the Galatians with his rhetoric? How is it reconciled with even confronting others with sin and error, for that matter?
Given the definition of "group attachment" above, it may be best to understand agape as a parallel to another known concept of today -- not love, but tough love. For the sake of popular culture awareness I will allude to perhaps the most famous example of such "tough love" known today -- the New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark (whose story was told in the movie Lean on Me) who cleaned out his high school and made it a safe place for those who wanted to learn.
Clark was no soft sentimentalist! He kicked those out of school who disrupted the learning of others. He used physical compulsion to do it as needed. He used a bullhorn to get people's attention. Is this agape? Yes, it is! It is the Biblical form of agape in which Clark valued what was best for his students as a whole versus what the individual wanted.
Now consider this understanding in light of, for example, Jesus' confrontation with the Pharisees and others. It will take a complexity of emotion we find foreign, but conceptually, it is certainly possible to love one's enemies, and yet also attack them; and the same for one's disciples or allies. Like Clark's disruptive students, the Pharisees were a threat to the well-being of others; so likewise Peter when he made his error. They spread deception and falsehood and kept others from entering the Kingdom of God with their deceptions; or else led people down the wrong path and away from spiritual maturity. In such a scenario, not only is it right and proper, for the sake of agape, to confront and confront boldly; it may be the only responsible thing to do to keep the "disease" or error from spreading and afflicting more souls! (In the ancient world, and even today, insults and polemics were a way to shame and discredit an opponent; see here.) |
In simple terms, the biblical concept of love, as well as most every other concept presented in the bible, is not applicable to modern (western) society. We simply cannot understand their frame of reference without years of rigorous study.
It is an understatement to say that most Christians, including preachers, know almost nothing about Christian beliefs. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:43 am Post subject: |
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| Gamecock wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I don't think it is the responsibility of a Korean church if there is a so-called barber shop nearby. Why would it be the fault of Korean church attendees? Are you saying there is a difference between Catholic and Buddhist Koreans as compared to the Protestant Evangelicals you are probably alluding to? |
I guess what I was alluding to in my initial post was not hypocrisy, which many people wrote about, but what moral issues are important to Korean Christians, important enough for them to confront in a public sense. I brought up evangelicals, because they are often the first to be vociferous in moral causes. If in the States an unabashed house of prostitution opened next to a Baptist church, you know the parishoners would be doing everything they could to either get it shut down, or to convert the employees working there. My example illustrates that I have never even heard a Korean Christian acknowledge the prostitution issue here. It's just a surprising difference. I've also never hear abortion talked about, but in the U.S. Evangelicals (and Catholics) are convinced it is mass murder and the holocaust of their generation.
I'm not saying I mind that Korean Christians aren't the same as American Christians, I'm just curious as to what are the important moral issues in their world. |
Here there's a lot more separation between Christianity (기독교) and Catholicism (천주교) to the extent that they're treated as two separate religions as opposed to two types of Christianity. You might notice that Koreans call a Protestant church a 교회 and a Catholic one a 성당 (lit. a cathedral). I suspect Protestant Christians here are going to go into a bit of a crisis because the methods they use seem to be turning people off, and their percentage has gone down a bit whereas Catholic has gone way up (still more Protestants but Catholics are catching up). Reasons cited for that have been that they aren't nice to people that miss even a week of service, too pushy, put up visual graphs on the wall to show how much money has been raised, lack of a feeling of tradition and history, etc. Catholics have a more centralized system so they probably have much the same issues as most in the rest of the world. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Gamecock wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I don't think it is the responsibility of a Korean church if there is a so-called barber shop nearby. Why would it be the fault of Korean church attendees? Are you saying there is a difference between Catholic and Buddhist Koreans as compared to the Protestant Evangelicals you are probably alluding to? |
I guess what I was alluding to in my initial post was not hypocrisy, which many people wrote about, but what moral issues are important to Korean Christians, important enough for them to confront in a public sense. I brought up evangelicals, because they are often the first to be vociferous in moral causes. If in the States an unabashed house of prostitution opened next to a Baptist church, you know the parishoners would be doing everything they could to either get it shut down, or to convert the employees working there. My example illustrates that I have never even heard a Korean Christian acknowledge the prostitution issue here. It's just a surprising difference. I've also never hear abortion talked about, but in the U.S. Evangelicals (and Catholics) are convinced it is mass murder and the holocaust of their generation.
I'm not saying I mind that Korean Christians aren't the same as American Christians, I'm just curious as to what are the important moral issues in their world. |
Well, I told one of my Scottish friends that Koreans, in many ways, are like Westerners from the 1950s. Korea is considered to be a larger, national family, and you do not show your dirty laundry to others. For them, that is often a moral imperative i.e. saving collective face regardless of what the Bible says. This does not apply to all Koreans Buddhist or Christian, but it is too often a problem in this country, but there are many very good people, of course. |
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freethought
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| trinity24651 wrote: |
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| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. |
I'm glad I'm not a christian, because if I were, and I tried to live up to this definition, I'd be giving a hell of a lot of hand jobs to just about everyone I see... |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:00 am Post subject: |
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| freethought wrote: |
| trinity24651 wrote: |
| Quote: |
| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. |
I'm glad I'm not a christian, because if I were, and I tried to live up to this definition, I'd be giving a hell of a lot of hand jobs to just about everyone I see... |
Indeed, what does "as you love yourself" mean. Many people hate themselves. Being a true Christian maybe something to aspire to, but do they exist? and how many true Christian types are there to aspire to? |
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seoulunitarian
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:36 am Post subject: re: |
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| freethought wrote: |
| trinity24651 wrote: |
| Quote: |
| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. |
I'm glad I'm not a christian, because if I were, and I tried to live up to this definition, I'd be giving a hell of a lot of hand jobs to just about everyone I see... |
Your humor is refreshingly original (  in case you can't spot sarcasm).
Peace |
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seoulunitarian
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:37 am Post subject: re: |
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| ED209 wrote: |
| freethought wrote: |
| trinity24651 wrote: |
| Quote: |
| What is love? or What is Christian love? |
Loving your neighbor as you love yourself. |
I'm glad I'm not a christian, because if I were, and I tried to live up to this definition, I'd be giving a hell of a lot of hand jobs to just about everyone I see... |
Indeed, what does "as you love yourself" mean. Many people hate themselves. Being a true Christian maybe something to aspire to, but do they exist? and how many true Christian types are there to aspire to? |
Loving yourself, as far I can tell, means having a correct self-concept (i.e. respecting yourself).
Peace |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 6:03 am Post subject: Re: re: |
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| ED209 wrote: |
| What is Christian love? |
The missionary position, I assume. |
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Benicio
Joined: 25 May 2006
Location: Down South- where it's hot & wet
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:19 am Post subject: |
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As someone else said, "churches are not much more than glorified social clubs".
In the West, we have the problem of religious radicals trying to govern and dictate the lives of everyone else. That is annoying.
Luckily in Korea, other than trying hand out pamphlets and wanting to talk to you about and or invite you to church or some singing on the street, the Christians don't try to interfere in the lives of others they way they do back home.
I believe that Korean churches are mainly a place where people just have another 'group' in their lives to make connections and be involved with others. As long as they don't bother me, no problem.
It's those people like my aunt that really get me. She's a born-again hardcore baptist who has situational morality. If the lying, cheating, or conniving benefits her at the time, then morality be d@mned. She acts like she is totally justified in her moral lapses because she is "christian". Her church seems more interested in stopping others from living their lives the way that they wish than actually trying to follow ideas of "morality".
Anyway, it reminds me of a joke from a long time ago.
Q- What's the difference between Methodists and Baptists?
A- Nothing, except that Methodists say hello to each other at the liquor store. |
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