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madowlspeaks
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: Somewhere in time and space
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 Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject: My first and last church experince in Korea |
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I consider myself a Catholic. Not perfectly devout-I just try to
be as good a person as I can be because IMHO, no one can be as holy as God but God him/herself. I try to do good, but at the same time,accept my faults as a human being.
Today I went to "church" It was not the kind of church I am used to.
It was in an auditorium, had a band and had "regular" people
addressing the people in attendance.
I thought....oh, this is not so bad, just very different that the cathedrals I have been to in the past.
That is, until I read a sermon written by the "pastor" that was handed out at the door.
It was a paper about how to tell the difference between "real" and "fake" christians.
I. was. floored.
Last time I checked, God was the judge of man. Since when, in a place of god, or even in society, do we judge ourselves and our neighbors as "holier than thou?"
I could not keep this to myself.
I was fuming.
In fact, I walked right up to the pastor and said "THE LAST TIME I CHECKED, GOD WAS THE JUDGE OF MAN' gave him his paper back and left.
I will never go back.
Thanks for the wonderful acceptance. Yeah right.
Last edited by madowlspeaks on Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:32 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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ciccone_youth
Joined: 03 Mar 2008
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| the first and only time i went to church here, we received a toothbrush as a present. |
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madowlspeaks
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: Somewhere in time and space
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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| ciccone_youth wrote: |
| the first and only time i went to church here, we received a toothbrush as a present. |
My gift from this experience would have to be that I am now more convinced of my own convictions. |
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Imrahil
Joined: 04 Feb 2008
Location: On the other side of the world.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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| My last time in church was about 2 years ago. My then girlfriend, now my wife, convinced me to go to this church with her friend. I guess the friend convinced my wife to attend a service at this church. The first half was okay, but then at the end during the 'closing song,' literally everyone surrounded us and sang to us. My then girlfriend and i just stood in this circle and looked to the ground while trying not to look too embarrassed. I also am Catholic and this church was not a catholic church, but I swore to her that I would never attend that church again! Even though, I live only a 5 minute walk from that church. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:56 pm Post subject: Re: My first and last church experince in Korea |
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| madowlspeaks wrote: |
| ... no one can be as holy as God but God him/herself..... how to tell the difference between "real" and "fake" christians. |
How many real Christians believe that God could possibly be a she. 
You call yourself a Catholic and yet the Father might be a Mother as well as the Son the Holy Spirit?
The Christians I have known are well aware of the difference between the true believers and nonbelievers. After all, the bible speaks of the chosen ones surviving armageddon. |
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Passions
Joined: 31 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Did you at least pay your offering to the business there? |
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DrunkenMaster
Joined: 04 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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This country is cult central. It's the birthplace of the Moonies.
Then there's the mountain-top end of the world people.
Then the cult that sealed that poor fellow into the wall of the house.
This country is rife with cult mentality. It makes complete sense that this would extend to their churches, where it's more of a speaking in tongues/snake handling atmosphere than the Catholicism you might be used to. Pastors are given a god-like status in the churches, and there is a clear line between "Christian" and "Catholic" whatever that means. Shamanistic ritual is ingrained in their neo-confucian hierarchies, to the point where going to church feels about the same as going to an acid party with a priest.
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Cults in South Korea are notorious for their involvement in swindling scandals, sexual abuse charges, dismemberment of their victims, slave labor, and extortion of money. Despite these alarming practices, cults are making a comeback in South Korea. Faith in doomsday sects waned when the most controversial among them, the Yongsaeng (Everlasting Life) cult, was disbanded in 1994 on charges of swindling their followers.
This year, however, cult experts fear predictors of Armageddon are making a comeback. According to many estimations, aided by the economic crisis in their country, a rash of new cults continue to spring up while older ones revive. Approximately 100 cult leaders currently claim to be gods or messiahs. "They are flourishing again by taking advantage of the country's economic crisis," warned Tak Ji-Won, 31, who opened a hot-line service in 1994 after his father, a prominent anti-cult activist, was killed by cult members. "My office is busy again with calls by the victims of doomsday sects which have recruited followers with a sermon that the end of the world is imminent," said Ji-Won according to Agence France Presse [January 14, 1999].
Ji-Won estimates the number of "dangerous" doomsday sect members awaiting the end of the world this year is climbing into the thousands. Estimates of cult membership in Korea alone, provided by the Korean National Council of Churches in 1997, was 200,000 in 1997. "I believe the number is now much higher as many cults are gaining power through clandestine door-to-door propagation. I'm not concerned about figures, but about possible mass suicide. Some violent sect members regard suicide as martyrdom to be free from sin. They die to find an eternal life in heaven, misguided by their leaders," Ji-Won concluded, as reported by Agence France Presse.
He pointed out that tragic incidents -- such as a suicide that took place last October when seven members of a Bible-based cult burned themselves to death in a van -- actually increase cult membership. That suicide, combined with doomsday references to the decline of the local and national economy, sparked intensive recruiting efforts among hundreds of fringe religions and messianic cults, who successfully broadened their influence and increased their membership.
Experts and anti-cult activists point to the ancient seer Nostradamus and his end-of-the-world predictions as one of the sources of apocalyptic cult philosophy. "My group is closely monitoring one cult who claims the end of the world will come on September 9 this year," said Park Chan-Sung at the Christian Council of Korea. He predicts Nostradamus' prophesies will be widely recited this year in newspapers, magazines, and even website chatters.
"Since 1994, troubled cults have kept a low profile. But their number began multiplying at the turn of the century," he said, adding South Korea has been home to some 200 detrimental cults. "In the past, doomsday followers were mostly uneducated. Now the sects draw even intellectuals such as college professors," he concluded, as quoted by Agence France Presse. |
http://www.factnet.org/headlines/korean_cults.htm
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South Korean cult merges sex with prayer
"First of all, we'd like you to look at the photos of the seven bikinied beauties at left," Friday (July 2 says coyly, as if readers' eyes will not have strayed in that direction uninstructed.
The young women are introduced as faithful members of a South Korean cult called JMS, which stands for Jung Myung Suk, the cult's smiling 61-year-old founder. He has � or at least he had, before pending rape charges apparently forced him to flee his native country � ample reason to smile. "These women," alleges Friday, "are the among the founder's specially selected sex partners." Five of the seven are identified as teenagers; one of them is in junior high school.
There's nothing new anymore in pseudo-gurus abusing their charisma. Nor, perhaps, is there anything really new in the apparent fact that JMS's Japanese membership continues to soar even as the allegations against Jung multiply. New or not, the ease with which people seeking answers to unanswerable eternal questions allow themselves to be taken in by fast-talking "saviors" never fails to shock. And in Japan at least, JMS believers are hardly intellectual no-accounts. On the contrary, says Friday, most of them are drawn from the most prestigious universities and corporations in the country.
Jung honed his sagely credentials as an acolyte of South Korea's Unification Church, whose founder, Sun Myung Moon, presided over too far-flung a business empire to retain much credibility as a holy man. In 1978, Jung broke away from the church to found the sect that bears his initials. Nine years later, a JMS missionary enrolled at Tsukuba university as an exchange student served as the Seoul-based cult's Japan bridgehead. The gospel he preached, thin though it may seem to a skeptical outsider, evidently had something in it that people are looking for.
Its Bible-based teaching is similar to that of the Unification Church but departs from it, Friday explains, in three particulars. First, it expressly identifies Jung as a savior. Secondly, it teaches that depravity, originating in intercourse with the devil, can be defeated by intercourse with the savior, in which connection it offers what it calls "lovers' education" to those judged worthy. Thirdly, it stipulates that female believers who have not received this lovers' education must marry male members of the cult in mass weddings called "benediction ceremonies."
A South Korean backlash to all this had been brewing for a year when, in December 1999, Jung fled the country, a lawsuit for rape pending against him. Other lawsuits followed as alleged victims continued to come forward.
Why, then, should the cult be flourishing in Japan? �One reason the cult has not had much negative attention here," Friday hears from a former believer, "is that it limits its recruiting to students and graduates of top universities" � Todai, Hitotsubashi, Waseda, Keio and so on. "The cult worms its way into university clubs, and wins converts by flattering the elite pride of the members.
"Tragically," says Friday, "many young women believe JMS is a pure religion; they don't know about the sexual exploitation by the founder that comes with it. Any number of women, virgins among them, have been forced into sexual relations." Korean and Japanese victims, the magazine figures, number in the thousands.
And yet even now, Friday continues in unconcealed astonishment, "in Japan and South Korea, every Sunday believers gather at various locations to take in the master's sermons, delivered via the Internet from his refuge in China. Photos of likely sex partners continue to be sent to him, followed by the women themselves, if they pass muster, for 'lovers' education.'"
"Jung prefers tall girls who look like models," says a former believer. "Preferably girls with little sexual experience � he's afraid of venereal disease. Virgins rate highest of all, as far as he's concerned." |
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/kuchikomi/423
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Doomsday cult leader arrested
The leader of a South Korean doomsday cult has been arrested after allegations that he swindled nearly $90m from his followers by promising them eternal life.
The man, Mo Haeng-Ryong, is said to have told them that the world would end on 19 February, but that they would be spared if they donated money to build a shrine where they would be able to strengthen their own mystical energy.
Prosecutors arrested Mr Mo, 66, and his wife as he was preparing to leave the country. The police are looking for at least 10 other people.
Heaven's Gathering
Known as Chun Jon Hoe - Heaven's Gathering - the cult was based in Hongchun, 200km north-east of the capital, Seoul.
A BBC correspondent in Seoul, Andrew Wood, says South Korea is fertile ground for religions new and old. It is the most Christian country on the mainland of East Asia, with hundreds of new sects.
It is also well known as home of the Unification Church, whose followers are often nicknamed Moonies, after the church's founder the Reverend Moon.
Some experts say there were up to 70 self- proclaimed Messiahs operating in South Korea in the 1960s.
The authorities say that the Chun Jon Hoe movement has 100,000-150,000 members. It is said to incorporate traditional shamanistic thinking with Confucion elements. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/618064.stm |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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I have nothing against God, but he's clearly been dropping the ball since forever.
Don't worry about God. Believe in yourself. You'll be better off.
Also, maybe you didn't get the memo, but all organized religions are scams. |
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ruffie
Joined: 11 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| You should have known better. |
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madowlspeaks
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: Somewhere in time and space
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:06 pm Post subject: Re: My first and last church experince in Korea |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| madowlspeaks wrote: |
| ... no one can be as holy as God but God him/herself..... how to tell the difference between "real" and "fake" christians. |
How many real Christians believe that God could possibly be a she.
You call yourself a Catholic and yet the Father might be a Mother as well as the Son the Holy Spirit?
The Christians I have known are well aware of the difference between the true believers and nonbelievers. After all, the bible speaks of the chosen ones surviving armageddon. |
Thanks for proving my point |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| ciccone_youth wrote: |
| the first and only time i went to church here, we received a toothbrush as a present. |
A bar of soap would have been more appropriate. |
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madowlspeaks
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: Somewhere in time and space
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Passions wrote: |
| Did you at least pay your offering to the business there? |
Yes, I left it in the toilet |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject: Re: My first and last church experince in Korea |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| madowlspeaks wrote: |
| ... no one can be as holy as God but God him/herself..... how to tell the difference between "real" and "fake" christians. |
How many real Christians believe that God could possibly be a she.
You call yourself a Catholic and yet the Father might be a Mother as well as the Son the Holy Spirit?
The Christians I have known are well aware of the difference between the true believers and nonbelievers. After all, the bible speaks of the chosen ones surviving armageddon. |
Flatulence. |
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Oreovictim
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:23 am Post subject: Re: My first and last church experince in Korea |
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[/quote] How many real Christians believe that God could possibly be a she. [/quote]
God sure is moody enough to be a "she." I've read bits of the Old Testament. When God isn't rewarding people (slaves as gifts?), she's busy killing people left and right.
ZOT!!!!! (<-- lightning bolt sound) |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:59 am Post subject: |
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I think a lot of people miss the point of Christianity. I have a theory (surprise!  )
Who runs churches? Men.
Who are the majority of church-goers, and the backbone of any church? Women.
Why do women go to church?
-To feel a part of a social group, fellowship.
-Tradition
-Comfort and a feeling of safety
-Music
-To have the family get dressed up
-To be a part of something that makes moral sense (at least partially), while the world we live in seems so harsh.
Why do men go to church?
-Because their wives tell them to.
From my vantage point, most married women don't seem very ideologically-inclined. They are not interested much in debating religion or reading philosophical dissertations on the subject. Religion for them is just something to be a part of that is bigger than themselves. It is where they get to see their friends, and show off their children and husbands, if they can convince them to miss their golf game or NFL pregame show.
So the next time you feel like bashing religion, just remember, for many it is just an excuse to get out of the house and socialize.
Last edited by blaseblasphemener on Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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