Korea Again

Well, I am back from Korea. Just wanted to make some observations.

One big thing that I noticed was the amount of construction. I saw multiple cranes (mostly around the suburban edges of Seoul) with new apartment complexes, shopping centers, bridges and roads being put up. My wife says it is probably due to the Korean President – heck, his nickname was ‘the bulldozer’ – approving new projects. Kinda made me wonder what the imminent domain laws are like in Korea. Also got me thinking on how piss poor the so called stimulus bill that was passed earlier on this year in the US was.

Seoul has really gotten into beautifying some of its spaces – mostly seen at night. Of course we already had the Cheongyechong stream development (thanks to The Bulldozer), but add to that the new square on Sejong Road. They also have started lighting up their bridges in some nice ways (which I do not remember from before) and with new lighting on the buildings (especially the newer ones), makes Seoul at night look nicer than I remember it.

Bikers! I saw more bikers at this recent trip than in my previous ones. Like wine bars that started popping up couple of years ago, it seems that biking has become somewhat of a fad. Heck, I even saw a drama that seem to say that it was cool to be a bike rider. Of course riding a bike in the congestion of Seoul is somewhat of a dangerous sport and I saw news reports talking about issues with bikers and bike lanes and such. However, as a recreational mountain biker, it would be kinda neat to ride some of the trails in the rural parts of Korea – perhaps one day.

One thing that happened this trip that surprised even my wife was yellow dust from China. She stated yellow dust happens during the spring and that fall in Korea should be crisp and clear, but on our last week in Korea, their it was: The haze of yellow dust from China. Now, not sure what is going on over there, but China needs to better manage their development and water usage as I hope yellow dust in the fall will not become the norm.

Focus Conference

Well, went to a conference held by our Presbytery entitled Focus. It consisted of a keynote presentation in the morning, 2 workshops after that and then a worship service with communion in the evening. For the workshops, I took one about children’s literature and one about the 500th birthday of Calvin. Here are my impressions of it.

Children’s Literature: Did pretty much fulfill my hope that it would provide me a list of books that may be useful to help develop a faith-life in both my children. However, (though I should have expected it these days) it was surprising how politically correct it was in its presentation. Also, was quite touched on how some authors explored the wonder of God’s love and I could sense how powerful such talents could be in service to God as these authors can give words to something that we Christians feel but lack the ability to express. One thing that I did not like was that some of these books made me a little uncomfortable with their adoration of nature. I mean, not all of the books were explicitly Christian, but it is something that as a parent I need to stress; that creation points and celebrates the Creator.

Calvin’s 500th Birthday: With such a topic as John Calvin, I did not envy the instructor as I am sure with so many sources of information and opinions and written works about that man, that it would have been tough to know where to start and how to cover Calvin satisfactorily in an hour’s worth of time. I noted couple of books of interest, but as for the class, it just tickled the surface of the man, his time and his work. One noted irony is that predestination and election were doctrines that was introduced to downplay any notions of works-righteousness, but it ended up fueling works – as the question of who is the elect was answered by, you shall know by their fruits and thus people wanted to make sure that they had the fruits.

Speaker: Now I am not a proponent of the emerging church movement. I agree with what they are trying to do: They want to bring people to Christ. I agree with what the speaker said about how the church is the people and I too agree that we need to present the message of Christ in a way that is relevant, accessible and contemporary (to an extent). But, I think they miss one big point – that of demographics. Basically people having children (note the plural form) and bringing them up properly in the faith. Also kinda like what I said about predestination, because they do not stress the forms of the church and worship, ironically it seems that it ends up focusing attention onto it. Finally the big thing is that from what I have seen, the emerging church movement guys implicitly or explicitly attack or denigrate other Christians. I think I heard couple of jokes about Bible thumping and end times novel reading believers today. Some may state that these guys are just making fun of themselves, but I would bet that presbyterians are in general politically, theologically and in other ways opponents of these so called Bible thumpers and do not identify with them. It is like east or west coast urbanites making fun of the flyover, rural people of the American heartland. Interesting thing, and it was shown by the video that the speaker presented on perceptions of Jesus and the church, was just how much things have remained the same even after two thousand years. The responses about impressions of Jesus reminded me about the question Jesus asked His disciples concerning who the people thought Jesus was. The responses by the students of UCSC would probably be the same if they were asked about impressions of Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa or other widely perceived moral exemplars and teachers.

Overall, it was nice. However I wonder if is of any use. In my observation today, I saw many senior citizens and predominantly composed of women (who knows, perhaps the men have all died off). It may be too late for many of the churches to make any changes or have the energy to draw any seekers to them and thus too late for the Presbyterian church. It would be sad if that was the case, as there is such history in the church.

Children of Hurin

Since my wife and children are away visiting the in-laws, it gave me the time to read some books that I was interested in. One of them was “Children of Hurin”. It was compiled and edited by Christopher Tolkien based on a story by his father, JRR Tolkien.

This book is set in the first age of Middle Earth, during the ascendency of Morgoth (the main source evil and Sauron’s master). It tells a story of a human leader, hero and elf-friend, Hurin, and his children, focusing mostly on his son, Turin. Hurin, after a disasterous battle with the forces of Morgoth, was captured, his family cursed by Morgoth and was forced to watch from a mountaintop as this curse worked its way with his children.

One of the things that I felt as I read this book was that though it was prose, it felt like I was reading an old English poem such as Beowulf. It was epic in scope, but it did not feel like an epic story. Large events and battles seemed sparsely described and the pace of the story ebbed and flowed where at certain points, time seemed to be compressed while at other points, it seemed to be slowed and stretched. I also felt it being pretty episodic where it described certain events and deeds of Turin’s life without having a strong narrative arc.

However, the main thing that I felt was the sense of despair. The characters not only faced personal mortality, but of their people, the Edain, and culture as well.  As Morgoth’s power grew. the Elves retreated to their hidden cities while the Edain, left pretty much to fend for themselves, were being systematically subjugated by the followers of Morgoth. As for Hurin and his children, every great deed later lead to a greater tragedy. Of course, Tolkien’s more famous work, The Lord of the Rings, also had this sense of despair. That is one thing I wish the movies by Peter Jackson emphasized more – well I felt that despair was fairly strong in the first movie, but the feeling of it seemed to wane with subsequent films. In this way, I feel that despite the pagan elements of these stories, Tolkien presented to us anti-pagan works. No mighty hero provided salvation for himself or his people and in fact, in The Lord of the Rings, it was the small and simple Hobbits that provided the ultimate victory over Sauron. And as Tolkien lived through the formation and growth of Nazi Germany and WW2, perhaps this was reaction against some of the Nazi imagery.

So, did I like the book? Yes, and would recommend it to any fan of fantasy.

Net Neut

Hmm… seems like there has been some discussions on net neutrality recently.

This is my thought on it. I am not really a fan of the net neutrality talk that I hear from the FCC – as it only really benefits the pseudo-parasites. Anyway, knowing that no system is perfect, I believe the fairest way to handle the situation, if it must be changed, is to meter it similarly to what happens with cell phone usage: say pay 19.99 for 1 GB of downloads per month, then each additional MB is 50 cents or something like that. I know there are people that say that the carriers should not have advertised something that they cannot deliver, but it is their lines and if they cannot make a profit, then they go out of business and if they go out of business, that is one less carrier to provide service. Bandwidth is a resource and like all resources, it is scarce.  Besides, if it is like most other things in life, I would not be surprised if 90 percent  of the excess usage is due to only like 10 percent of the users.

Women

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted anything.

Anyway, came across and interesting article in First Things.

This was the 2nd article I read past week talking about how women’s happiness has been trending downward since the 1970’s. This despite achievements in workplace parity and in education (women now surpass that of men in educational achievement), the trend of men taking more responsibility with household chores and rearing of the kids, and increase in material wealth and prosperity. Couple of thoughts that passed through my mind while reading these articles.

One, I remember a friend telling me about something he read which states that among the three large components making up a person’s life: career, children and marriage - a person can, for the most part, excel at 2 of the three. So you had to choose what you want to devote you time and energy to. Perhaps women, with the encouragement of pop culture and probably due to the achievements mentioned above, thought it easy to have it all, and thus ended up with not investing enough into any of them, maybe even deceiving themselves and thus not even noticing signs that certain relationships were lacking their attention.

The other thought was how our explicit culture which pornography is a blatant example, along with post-modern ideas work to undermine husband-wife relationships. There have been studies where it was found that when women sexually climax, their body releases chemical compounds (oxytocin, I believe) that relaxes them and acts to bind them to their husbands. This compound also gets released when women breast feed their baby. Well, when these unitative acts get outsourced via pornography or other means, intimacy is degraded. However, the more general issue is of course the explicitness of it all. Too many of us expose our most initimate details, things that only God and spouse should know, via the many ways that we connect with the world. Thus relationships that should be valuable due to the exclusive nature of it, is not since everyone else has seen it or has knowledge of it. Working in the background is our post-modern culture which gnaws at conventions and, dare I say, truths that sustain us and guide us.

The real victims of course is the natural family in general and our children in particular. It is my belief that natural families, if I have not been clear before, is the key to solving much of the ills that face us as a society. Education, crime, citizenship, health and even economics are tied to natural families. You strengthen natural families and you will improve these other things.

Faith, Arts and Sciences

“I thank thee, Lord God our Creator, that thou allowest me to see the beauty in thy work of creation.”

- Johannes Kepler

Looking around the archives of First Things, I came across this article. It is a response to another article from Wall Street Journal and gives a basic reasoning on how God and science can mix. The quote above comes from that article.

That quote got me thinking on the sciences. Science was a way to look into the laws and the ordering of creation. It had almost a revelatory purpose and hence it raised man up by pointing them to something that was higher than themselves. It pointed toward God.  Contrast that with what goes on today where one hurries to publish every minuscule discovery before some other person makes the exact same discovery. It is research but to what end?

Something similar can be said about the arts, where it also was for pointing us to something higher. Now anyone that can put words to paper, line to canvas, hold a note or even cook is considered an artist, and everyone clamors to get their 15 minutes of fame.

In the arts and in the sciences, I fear that we have put ourselves up as idols…

God’s Love – Updated

Something rare happened a church this past weekend: An Egyptian Presbyterian Pastor came to give us a sermon. It’s rare enough to meet a Christian from Egypt but someone that is a Presbyterian? Now that is something that you do not see everyday. Anyway, what he said kinda struck a certain harmony with something that I have been thinking about these days: God’s love.

His sermon was basically about how we should worship God. We worship God in Spirit and in Truth. He stressed that we need to prepare ourselves and guard ourselves so that we worship God properly. I am not sure how well his sermon was received but a certain sense of fear, reverence and awe is needed as we approach and interact with Someone so awesome and in many ways mysterious.

That is where the harmony was felt. I have been thinking about God’s love and what the pastor said struck a chord with some items that came up as I thought about God’s love.

There are many analogies of God’s love toward us in the Bible – that of shepherd and sheep, father and son, etc. Probably the most powerful description of God’s love is of that between man and woman. We see it in such places as Song of Songs, Hosea, letters of Paul, etc. It is and image of the love of the other. Meaning, the love is of two beings that, though sharing some characteristics, are not the same: We love God and God loves us, but God is not us and we are not God. God is the creator and we are the creation. Sometimes I wonder if we have not pasted an image of ourselves onto God and have that image love us. The way that we worship, the songs that we sing, the work that we do supposedly for God’s Kingdom do they really have us being embraced by heavenly or earthly things? God is spirit and His love is a love not of this world. I guess the term I would use would be: Mystery – His love is something that we will not totally figure out nor put our arms around.

Another thing is that I think that God’s love should strike fear in us. God’s love is fearful since He loves us so deeply, so passionately, and with such breadth that we would drown, burn and be lost if He fully manifested Himself to us in our state. Even if He did not come in judgment, we should be fearful. I remember a story that I heard in a sermon about a pastor who fasted and prayed that God would reveal His love to him. It ended up that he was begging God to stop as he could not take the waves of love that God was letting him feel. We need to guard ourselves with fear.

Just as we worship in spirit and prepare ourselves for it, we are loved by a spiritual being and with a love that is fearful.

A little update: Here is an article by a Catholic scholar, Michael Novak, that goes into the topic God’s love – at least in the first half of the article. It may give little more light into the mystery, majesty and power of it.

Anniversary

Guess it is the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing. Charles Krauthammer, one of my favorite columnist, has an editorial about it.

It is kinda sad to think that 66 years from Wright brother’s flight at Kitty Hawk, we landed on the moon, but we probably will not be going back to the moon in my lifetime. Heck, with what we are focused on in the United States with healthcare and environment, pretty soon we really will be begging Russia, China and perhaps India for a ride to space.

Communion

Had a special service this past Sunday at church – called Jazz Communion Service. It basically was a church service with communion where the music was lead by a jazz influenced band – bass, piano and small drum.

Anyway, it kinda got me thinking on what style of communion I like especially in terms of the nature and distribution of the elements. I like:

• people coming up to receive the bread and wine instead of them being passed around. I feel that this makes the people a little more active in the communion and along with that, I think it is good for the people to hear ‘this is the body’ and ‘this is the blood’ as they are receiving the bread and wine.
• I also like having to break a piece of bread off a larger loaf instead of having pre-cut pieces of bread
• As for the bread, I don’t really like sweet Hawaiian bread type of bread. I think it should not be sweet and it should be chewy – I want the people to get the breaking and chewing so that it enforces the reality of Christ’s body that was broken for us.
• Also, as for the wine, it should be wine and not grape juice. Perhaps we should be careful of some recovering alcoholic and I know some parents would not want their children to consume alcohol, but I think little bit of burning as the wine goes down our throat to be another thing that enforces the reality of Christ’s blood that was spilt for us. BTW I am kind of a teetotaler and so it’s not like I’m going: oohhh real wine.
• Finally, I know that this may gross out some people, but I also like the notion of people taking a gulp of wine from a common cup. I was at an Episcopalian service and they did this. They had a nice chalice and everyone would take a gulp from it and the person administrating would wipe the lip of the cup between each person.

Anyway, let me know of your thoughts

A Suicide

Korea, a country that has the highest suicide rate among the worlds top 30 economies, has a real high profile one: former President Roh Moo Hyun. He was facing some corruption charges and he decided to end it by jumping off a cliff. Couple of thoughts:

1. I think every Korean president faced corruption charges once they left their office.

2. The amounts that he was involved with was peanuts compared to the amounts other former presidents were involved with (couple of millions vs hundreds of millions)

3. He always seemed to be an insecure and not quite happy person (even though he has quite a compelling life story – although I did not like the way that he came into power and some of his policies) and thus though this news is shocking, in some ways, it feels like it is in character. Mind you I am no psychologist and so this is just a feeling thing.

Anyway, what I really wanted to ponder was Korea itself. Again, it has one of the highest suicide rates - high even among what one would call the elites of society. Not only this former president, but many famous Koreans such as actors and actresses have committed suicide recently. On top of that, Korea has the lowest birth rate outside of Hong Kong I think. Someone said that a quick measure of a society’s happiness and optimism is to plot the birth rate and the suicide rate. Those with high birthrate and low suicide rate can be considered happy while those with low birth rate and high suicide rate can be considered unhappy. If this is the case, Korea is depressed. Not sure if Korea is following Japan….Anyway, I feel that this was not always so as I think birthrates in the 60s and 70s were much higher.  Perhaps with the rapid industrialization and economic growth, something got lost?

Something to ponder….