VillagePastor

Life in Busan

One of the more impressive cities I have seen on this cultural learning trip sits on the southeastern corner of the Korean peninsula. Busan is wedged between the mountains and the sea and is Korea’s most important port. It is the closest part of the country to Japan, giving it the misfortune of being the center of lots of conflicts. Today it is a bustling seaport building with some of the most immense towers I have ever seen, some as high as 100 stories! Given that there is little land that is flat in Korea, most people live in these gigantic buildings that soar up into the clouds.  Imagine living on the 99^th floor, getting in your car, and remembering you left your cell phone back in the apartment.

In the middle of the city is the largest department store in the world, Shinesgae. It is huge, towering up several stories as well! On the first floor, I was invited into another world, Spa  Land. I was hesitant (after all, this is a working trip).  But I was persuaded that this was an important part of understanding Korean culture, and I dutifully submitted to my hosts.

All I can say is that I have never seen, experienced anything like this. It is actually called shimspa, “a space in between to let it all go.” And I sort of did.  It is the mother of all oases. I don’t know how else to describe it. There are 22 baths, hot and super hot, and cold and really cold, and jets that massage, and body scrubs that get rid of the old skin. And after these, there are 13 distinctively themed “Jjimjilbangs”, steam rooms around various themes-Finnish, Yellow Earth (good for mental stability so I stayed a long time), Roman, Pyramid (where energies are collected), Wave Room, etc. I tried to visit all of these. It took four hours to submit my body to the rigors of Spa Land (truly one of the roughest days of my life). After a major climb up towards Mt Hallasan on JeJu Island the day before, in a constant mist and rain, this was a welcome relief.

Two more things stand out. First, I have been finally converted to Korean food.  I take back the insulting language I have used up till now. Something happened around my sixth day.  Maybe it was starvation. But now, Bibimbap, Bulgogi, Pork Kimchi, fish heads—bring them on! The lettuce wraps over here put PF Chang’s to shame. I am even thinking that my next car should be silver. Something is happening to me. I walk in small stores and go for the rice drinks. I even walked by a rare Outback Steak Restaurant and sniffed at it.

The other part, and really the best experience in Busan, was sitting down with the director of Far East Broadcasting. He is an amazing visionary, seeking to reach Busan (some 4 million people) with the gospel through radio. About 10% of the population here are believers. Most of the rest are Buddhists or secularists. FEBC is an international Christian radio network that has ten centers in Korea, reaching 3.1 billion listeners (from North Korea to the underground church in China, to Russia, and beyond to nearly every continent).  There are some 400,000 believers just in North Korea, many of whom depend upon this ministry. It is the only station that broadcasts 24 hours a day in Korea, so late night taxi drivers, many of whom are  Buddhists, call in  and give their lives to Christ.  One of my great privileges before leaving this city was to be part of an interview on FEBC, and on it I shared the story of our church, Village (I am discovering that multicultural ministry is of great interest over here).

Following Busan, and after a very brief visit at Bulguk-sa (perhaps Korea’s most spectacular Buddhist temple), you can see and feel the spiritual war at work here.  Seeing people bowing to Buddha, to a worthless idol, it made me so grateful I serve a living God who hears and sees and knows and loves and forgives me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep Korea Weird

A big part of what makes travel worth every penny spent is the things you learn about culture, learn about yourself. Of course, you have to come with an inquiring mind. It is easy to let the brain coast, I know, but when you are moving around in a different culture you have to keep telling yourself to observe, notice, look for the "weirdness." I started doing this here in Korea, making a list of things that are somewhat odd.  Here's my initial list:

1. Koreans seem to prefer white or silver cars. Since I've begun this observation, I have found that it is hard to find other colors, except black. Every parking lot, it is the same story. I have no explanation, but maybe the second observation gives a hint.
   
2. You can bump into people and no one minds. I'm told there is no word for "excuse me". People like to be close. It's a good thing, because in a dense population, things get tight, like riding subways. Thankfully, it seems most everyone practices great personal hygiene. Community is important, which may explain a tendency to have the same color of car. No one minds a certain sameness, rather than an individualism that wants to announce I am different, even better than you.
   
3. Lots of women wear high heels. I don't know why, because they seem to be the most uncomfortable shoes ever invented. They also like wearing stripes (which given the fact most are slender, stripes work). Stripes may not work so well in other cultures I am more familiar with. Slenderness has something to do with the next observation... 
4. Korean food is just plain weird. Many of the dishes are fermented cabbage, radishes, peppers. Most seafood dishes are raw, and seaweed is really big over here, as well as cold noodles served with pieces of ice for dessert. The claim is that this is all good for the bowel (which makes sense since the body would want to quickly exit this strange mix). But I have discovered the key to enjoying the food. I order extra rice and mix everything together and, for reasons I cannot explain, it actually tastes good. 
5. People seem to be very forceful with their pronunciations!!!! When you listen to Korean, it can seem that they are very intense, even highly agitated with one another. You think they are saying "You better listen to me, because I will otherwise force this Kim chi down your throat!!! (but they may be actually saying something quite bland like "I really liked the Kim chi" or "I miss the Dewey Decimal System" or "I hope tomorrow is less humid" (because if it doesn't change, I will become intense!). I again have no explanation, but they seem to love percussion instruments, and there might be a relationship here.
   
6. Coffee shops are ubiquitous. Everywhere you look there is Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Coffee Bene, etc. Koreans love their coffee. Another thing here, there are more Dunkin Donuts per square mile than any place on earth. But again, a certain weirdness is at work. The donuts have flavors like soy, sweet potato, green tea, seaweed, etc. My chai tea was soy milk with 12 grains mixed in with tapioca bubbles and rice pudding (I'm not kidding!). This is a health nut's paradise, if you don't mind the taste. 
7. Bananas come in cellophane wrap. Not sure why the added protection, but the presentation at the table is impressive. 
8. Korean pastors are treated with great deference and respect. I am thinking about coming here more often.
9. Chopsticks are... (I have a word in mind here, but I better not use it). Who invented these things? I may as well be eating with sewing needles. At least I could spear the food. This becomes problematic when you are traveling with two Korean pastors, eating community style, and who generally are very hungry. Mercifully, an occasional waiter brings me a fork. Otherwise, meals are more like eating samplers at Costco.
   
10. Finally, "nye" (pronounced "neh") means yes. Are they messing with me?

I'm sure the list will grow.  This is not to say Koreans are anymore unusual than any other culture.  We are all strange, especially Americans. There is a reason Portland has a popular bumper sticker, Keep Portland Weird. In truth, Korea is actually one of the more civil, safe, gracious places I have ever been to. The people are wonderful, but the food...

 

The Soul of Seoul

It was a remarkable experience staring across the Han River into North Korea today. Looks are deceiving, for it appears so tranquil. One looks through the magnified lens and sees scattered homes and rolling farmland. But a closer look and you realize the apparent people are not moving, the houses are actually a facade, and out of sight are a number of military personnel trained to shoot anyone seeking to climb the barbed wire and attempt a river crossing. It's all part of the propaganda along the 38th parallel. What you also sense is evil. You realize it is not the way it is supposed to be.

Even more remarkable is the attitude of many Koreans I have met who genuinely hope for reconciliation. Last night I spent some time in a worship service dedicated to meeting every Thursday night for this one purpose—to pray for reconciliation with the north. What began with a small core of believers some ten years ago has grown into 400-500 who meet every week, the majority in their 20's, who petition God to restore peace, and do it for His glory. Pretty amazing!

I'm impressed with believers over here, devoted to reaching a lost world. What many do not realize is that, outside of one other nation, Korea sends the most missionaries abroad. I sat down for an interview with a publisher yesterday, and it was astounding to hear what they are doing in these days. Major books from the States are translated within days after release. Across the street we met with a Christian broadcasting group, led by a former NBC correspondent, who are bringing the gospel in almost every major city in the world. Christianity seems to have made a profound affect on culture here, but the emerging prosperity is leading a growing number to find less need for God. There is a sense the growth of the church has peaked, but hopefully God will bring a fresh wind.

A lot of what I have experienced so far was incorporated in the life of an 80 year old woman I was privilged to meet and have lunch with today. Dining on the 57th floor of Seoul's tallest building (eating an assortment of raw squid, eel, shark, and abalone), she shared her story of survival, from the intimidation of being a young girl during the Japanese occupation, to living in hiding when North Korea occupied Seoul in 1950, to becoming a successful business woman. Through it all, and coming out of a Buddhist background, she met Christ, and she too joins the hope that one day this nation will be one.

A pretty cool start of the trip--not to mention the War Museum, the Missionary Cemetary, the flea market, a late night hike down from the Seoul Tower, and visiting the shops in the famous Insadong. It's a pretty amazing peninsula.

 

Initial Impressions of a New Culture

  

After a day in Seoul, Korea, it’s not hard to understand why the Koreans are a confident group. The airport is state of the art.  The city bustles with a huge mass of people, for the most part intentional in where they are moving.  It is very competitive.  Walk into a large bookstore, and books on how to excel on SAT’s abounds.  The subway is clean and modern and jammed, and really fast.  We lunched in a simple café, lined with people to eat only one menu offering—a tin bowl filled with kimchi, sausage, rice, egg, and cooked vegetables.  You put the cover on top the tin bottom and shake it up really hard, and then eat. And then you write your impressions on the wall. I know—different!   In the midst of a fairly dense city, we also escaped to an ancient palace, Changdeokung Palace, situated on some 60 acres, with “secret” gardens that were stunning.

This is a different Asia than other parts I have seen.  There is not the chaos of Manila, nor the strict order of a Singapore (though there is the same humidity).  In ways, it reminds me of my time in Poland years ago.  Like Korea, Poland has had a long history of being the “in between”, the ground through which armies East and West have traveled to do battle.  Consequently, Poland is a tenacious group of survivors, and one gets that sense here.  Koreans have lived on a peninsula unfortunately set between Japan and China and Russia.  All three have made their way through Korea, on their way to other global intentions, but using and abusing Korea on the way. I haven’t got a sense of the attitude towards North Korea yet. My guess is that an older generation still has painful memories, going back to the Korean War, and worries about them.  The emerging generation appears to be more interested in reconciliation, more interested in focusing on simply making a living and excelling.  This is a guess, and a simplistic one at that.

There is a deep appreciation of art—their pottery is beautiful.  There is also an appreciation for their cultural past, evidenced in a music performance we attended last night. It is called Nanta (hitting the drum really hard), set in a restaurant motif, though all the sounds were historic Korean sounds. There is striking evidence of a strong Christianity, along with other lesser layers of Buddhism, secularism, and Confucianism, etc.  Today I will get a closer look at the health of the church.

We will also see the DMZ, the war Museum, and other sites before heading south.  My aim is to dig more deeply into the culture and learn as much as I can.  I am blessed to see so much of the world and learn from it.  Korea has its own lessons to teach me, and I am praying God opens my eyes wide to them. 

Deliver Us From Evil

One of my summer pleasures is rereading Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor.  Because he writes out of years of reflection, years learning the craft of writing with clarity, I am finding that I missed a number of pastoral insights the first time around.  Reading it over an unhurried summer is much better than hastily reading it on a plane. 

In one of his chapters, “Sister Genevieve,” Peterson recounts a friendship that emerged with the prioress of a Carmelite monastery, a place where fourteen nuns live the contemplative life.  She became a help to him during a period he refers to as the badlands.  Almost all pastors go through them. Sister Genevieve extended needed soul care, introducing him to such saints as Teresa of Avila. Not that monastery life should be too romanticized.  Sister Genevieve once asked, “Eugene, is it difficult to be married?”  Peterson noted the difficulty of two people giving up their self centered worlds, to which she replied, “How would you like to be married to thirteen women? Some of these nuns can be real bitches.”

But it was another conversation that really caught my attention. One day they talked about the Lord’s Prayer, and Peterson confessed something that may be true for many of us, that the hardest petition to pray is “Deliver us from evil.”  It did not surprise Sister Genevieve at all.  Listen to her response: “Oh you Protestants.  You are so naïve about evil.  You know everything about sin, but nothing about evil—the prevalence of evil, the persistence of evil especially in holy places…you label everything that is wrong with the world as a sin that you can name and then take charge of getting rid of.” 

I had hoped Peterson would elaborate, but he moved on.  But I am still back pondering her statement.  I think she is right—really right.  I’m beginning to realize how very little I know about evil.  I see it at times and have these occasional encounters.  When Heather and I crossed into the eastern side of Germany in 1991, just as the wall was coming down, we felt an unmistakable sense of evil surrounding our souls.  This had been a place of darkness and despair under an atheistic system, and evil was allowed to run freer.  Two years ago, in Pergamum, one of the locations of the seven churches addressed in Revelation, the city referred to as “Satan’s throne”, I had one of my most horrific nightmares, experiencing something of a heavy force seeking to crush me in the night. Coincidence perhaps, but I don’t think so. Evil is also territorial.

At one point, Jesus gathered His disciples and revealed some kingdom secrets, including this—that the Evil One does this work of planting the weeds of evil in the night.  In other words, there is an evil more insidious than we realize, that is anti-creation and anti-life, spoiling, corrupting, and perverting creation.  Underneath so much of the mess is an evil that damages lives, ruins marriages, and divides churches.  One would not refer to the recent tragedy in Norway as the work of a sinful man, anymore than 9/11.  Something deeper is going on—an evil that occasionally shows itself in awful ways.  When you talk to Iraqi refugees who have been terrorized into leaving because of their Christian faith, when you read about the awful acts of violence in Hama, the desperate situation in the horn of Africa, or the brutal raping going on in Congo, you know that something very dark is behind it all.

A book many of us should read in these days is NT Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God. Books like his and Os Guinness’ Unspeakable are critical, clarifying books.  The reason we need to come to a deeper understanding is that so many of the problems we are currently facing are dealt with at a superficial level, with little thought to the underlying evil.  Behind the current economic meltdown, a number of obvious villains are identified—mortgage brokers seeking to make a quick profit; consumers pursuing loans they had no business going after; and unchecked government spending.  All of this has led to deficits to the moon, to cities like Central Falls filing bankruptcy.  But few talk about the underlying evil—such as a deep greed—that gets its way into about all of us, that amounts to idolatry (Col 3:5).  Were he writing today, Paul would say what he once wrote to the Corinthians—“You are looking at things as they are outwardly” (2 Cor 10:7).  There is something much deeper going on that we must take seriously, name, and judge.  There is an evil, that though defeated at the Cross (Col 2:15), continues to work in sinister ways, that demands we pray daily—deliver us from evil.