Korean Job Discussion Forums

[forever_young]

im going back to korea to live and work in a few months.
i will be taking the translator's exam and hopefully pass and work as a freelancer.
i have made a deal with my christian mother who has forever been trying to convert me to her religion to translate a christian book called 'The purpose driven life' as an exercise for the exam in exchange for financial aid to get settled in korea.
as u can expect i will be analysing and comprehending this book in great detail as i translate it.
i'm not religious but i was required to go to church with my mother until i reached my adulthood so i know a good deal about christianity and its preachings.
has any other non-christians delved into christianity willingly or otherwise?
if u have what were the results?

do u think i might end up being a born again christian?

by the way i have already started translating the book...

[RACETRAITOR]

My bet: you'll find the book well-meaning but it'll be a little hard to swallow. You're not going to find God in a book, just some guy who pretends he knows who God is.

[hubba bubba]

You are more likely to become a "born again" because of a hottie than a book.

[ED209]

You could translate the God Delusion along side as a kinda vaccine.

You sound intelligent enough to make your own decisions on what you believe. AS you said you left the church during adulthood. If you turn into a Christian fundamentalist then it was only a matter of time. I haven't read the book but if you're a theist I'm sure it will support you beliefs not override them.

What affect does your mother think translating this book will have on you? Or is she Korean and just wants a copy for her and her mates.

Isn't this one of Oprah's book club books? Forget what I said, burn what ever copies you have delete your work and never go home to your mother again (she's Oprah's now)

[forever_young]

[forever_young]

[RACETRAITOR]

[forever_young]

[forever_young]

[RACETRAITOR]

[faster]

It's already available and widely-read in Korean.

[blynch]

[ED209]

[RACETRAITOR]

[Gatsby]

In answer to your question, yes, of course you will be born again. At least unless you have achieved enlightenment and mastery of your consciousness and emotions in the transition after death, according to Buddhism.

It's a little odd that Christianity sometimes uses parallel language, yet with such different meaning. But there was a time when Christians believed in reincarnation, until about the year 500.

I am not a Christian, having been born into a different religion, so I am not an expert on it, despite having been married to a Catholic. But it seems to me that many, if not most, Christians do not really understand their religion. But some undoubtedly do, and these are sometimes the ones who do not talk about their faith, so one should be cautious passing judgement on others. And as I have not read this book, I should reserve judgement.

The idea of purpose, or as it has sometimes been referred to "calling," has long roots in American Christianity. It goes back at least to the early days of Protestant settlement in New England, when communities were small, and in a constant battle against the harsh elements for survival. The idea was that each person had a calling to a profession, and that calling was defined as something that person enjoyed doing, was good at, and that contributed to the community, indeed was the best way that person could contribute to the whole. And so the task was for the person to find his calling.

Naturally, this being Christianity, there was an element of destiny in one's calling. The concept was balanced by the general rule that one should not pursue something one enjoyed if it made no contribution to the whole, and one should not try to make some sacrificial contribution by doing something one did not enjoy if one was not uniquely good at it. Ultimately, it was guided by the practicality of survival of the social group, but the assumption was that everyone had a calling, everyone was put there with some special contribution to make, and had a place within the social fabric.

I have always liked this idea, and I am glad that it is getting renewed attention in this talk about the purpose driven life. Even in the larger modern society, it seems to me we each have our calling, if only we could find it. But why it would take a whole book to explain it is not clear to me. However, Protestant ideas such as this have had broader consequences for the political, economic and social development of the United States. The classic on the subject is sociologist Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."

But to return to my original point, the conceptual roots of Christianity are the same as those of Buddhism, and probably even Hinduism. Christianity evolved through a different path historically and geographically. It developed out of ancient Greek mysticism, which was transformed into Roman Stoicism. Christianity some might say was a populist form of Stoicism, a teaching provided without charge to the masses, unlike the Stoicism of emperors. And Greek philosophy extended back through Pythagoras to India, where he was said to have studied. What exactly Pythagoras and other proponents of the Greek mystery schools believed in is shrouded in historical secrecy, but some of it can be inferred. Plato repeatedly refers to the mysteries and initiation. Read the Meno.

Islam was an offshoot of this Greek and Roman mysticism, but without, according to Edward Gibbon, the tradition of skepticism found in Greek philosophy. The result was fanaticism, not unlike its counterpart, Christianity, once shorn of its skeptical roots.

Modern scholars with expertise in both Christianity and Buddhism have written about the similarities in the two religions. William Johnston, a Jesuit who lived and taught in Japan for many years, discussed these similarities in his book Silent Music. His focus was on the similarities in experience of Christian monks and Buddhist meditation.

More recently Prof. Elaine Pagels of Princeton has looked at the records of the earliest days of Christianity in her book "Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas," as well as her earlier books on Gnosticism. What she found was that the writings of the disciple Thomas corresponded surprisingly closely to the ideas of Buddhism, but were discarded by the early organizers of the Church, and of course were labeled as heresy, hence their exclusion from the New Testament. The reason may have been that Thomas said that Jesus said that a person could find the truth on their own, without being told by some religious authority. But Pagels suggests that Thomas' gospel may have actually more accurately reflected the teachings of Jesus than what survives in the Bible today.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, The Bible is not a very good source for understanding Christianity. If you want a guide to some of the absurdities to be found in the Bible, get a hold of Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth" (You will not find it in the "complete" writings.) But there are potentially things of value to be understood in Christianity.

I personally do not feel it is worth the trouble, as a non-Christian, to slog through all the nonsense in Christianity to find the buried truth. I particularly resent the way so many Christians have taken the noun "Christian" and transformed it into an adjective synonymous with "good." So, in their eyes, if you are not Christian, you are not good. I prefer to remain on the outside, thank you very much. It seems to me that once you "join" or even just attend, you start feeling enormous pressure also to "believe" what they believe. If you don't, you get kicked out. Many Christians seem to need to have you believe what they believe so that they can believe what they believe is right. The corollary is that the more irrational an idea inculcated in childhood, the more dogmatic adult believers become. Christianity wouldn't be so bad if it were not taught to children. Then Christians might be able to actually understand what they were being taught, and come to believe it through understanding and experience, rather than juvenile brainwashing.

And if you look at the 2,000 year history of Christianity without prejudice, it appears to me that it is a religion steeped in hatred and hypocricy, not unlike another religion that is inspiring so much violence in the Middle East. Twain said there were far more people killed in war in the name of Christianity than in the name of politics. And this is a shame, for if modern nations and leaders actually practiced their professed Christian principles of forgiveness, etc., we might actually have achieved world peace by now.

I prefer the Chan approach, which is that you do not really need a teacher to achieve enlightenment, and hence, you do not need Chan. Anyone can find it. Enlightenment is found within in the silence of the soul. As they say, Just sit. Or if you can't sit, at least don't go around killing people who disagree with you.