Mr. Kim came to Canada; he had dreams; did he realize them?

(지난 호에 이어)

“You know what happened. The conservative members who were family members of the pastor and friends of the pastor’s family launched telephone smear campaign against the best candidate, who was, as expected, not elected”, continued the deacon.

Kim recalled that the church was finally broken up, but the pastor, his family and his friends remained.

Kim was wondering why such ugly thing happened. Kim was himself anointed deacon.

After his long association with church life, he had his own interpretation of the problems of Korean churches in Montreal. He volunteered, at the same district service meeting, to offer his perception of the church problem.

“As far as I am concerned, the basic problem is this. First, many pastors regard church management as private business and evaluate church success in terms of the number of congregation members and the annual income. In other words, the priority is on the materialistic and monetary success; the depth and the quality of faith are ignored. Second, the success of pastors is also judged in terms of the number and the income. In Montreal, one hears often that the churches are depanneur business”, began to talk Kim with serious face.

“Now the crux of the matter is that, in reality, the head of many Korean churches is not God but the pastor. It means that the pastor and the congregation do not feel God’s presence. So, the pastor-congregation relation becomes something like teacher-student relation.”

"The teacher teaches the Bible; he does not preach the Bible. Teaching means transfer of knowledge of the Bible; preaching means sharing the words of God between the pastor and the congregation. In short, the problem is that the whole church ignores God; God is a bystander; God is not seen in the church”, continued Kim.

Kim went further: “Under such circumstance, it is not possible to elect proper elders or deacons. The solution is this. Whatever the church does, it should not be for the pastor, elders, deacons or ordinary church members; it should be for God.

"We go to church not to hear the pastor; we go to church to hear God through the pastor. We go to church not to appreciate the professional quality of the church choir; we go to church to feel the tender love of God through the beautiful voice of the choir. The only boss of the church is God”, concluded Kim.

A lady in the room asked: “Are we loving our neighbors?”, with challenging look.

“Yah, I like to know myself. After all, matured faith means loving our neighbors through God’s love. That is, Christian life means obeying the love Commandments. Do you agree?”.

Everybody in the room nodded.

An elder cut in: “To answer the lady’s question, there are three sub-questions involves. Who are our neighbors? What are the preconditions for love of neighbors? How should one love neighbors?”.

“Bravo Mr. elder! I think the same. Let me see, I will define who neighbors are.  According to the Good Book, our neighbors are the humanity. My family, my fellow congregation members, Koreans, Canadians and all other people in the world are created by God; they are all neighbors. Since they are created by God, they deserve our love”, insisted Kim.

“But look at our church. I have never heard our pastor praying for the people outside our church; this pastor thinks as if the Christian realm is limited to our church; for him, there is no other world apart from our church. Under such pastor, how can one expect to learn how to love neighbors”, a man supported the view of Kim.

“I like to cut in. I know a university professor who experienced loving neighbors. While the professor studies the Bible and theology, he wanted to test if he could love neighbors.

One afternoon, he sat on the sidewalk of the main street on Quebec City. He watched hundreds of peoples passing by.

There were whites, blacks, yellow, brown; there were fat men and thin men; there were beautiful ladies and less beautiful ladies; there were children and adults, there were well dressed people and poorly dressed ones, there were intelligent looking people and less intelligent looking ones; there were people looking happy and sad looking ones.

He watched these people for three hours and he asked himself if he could love them all. He said to himself “Yes!”. In the eyes of the professor, they are all human beings; they all suffer from fear, insecurity; they are sick sometimes; they all have moments of glory and joy; they all go through moments of despair. They are all vulnerable; they are all sinners; they are all God’s children. They are all brethren. The professor felt the urge to go them and kiss them, and tell them “I love you all!”, a lady told the story about the professor.

“That is it! The experience of the professor is, to me, Christian’s love of neighbor. I think that the professor’s experience reveals the most important principle of loving neighbors. It is the principle of the universality of human nature. All human beings as children of God and therefore everybody has something good in him or her; at the same time everybody is sinner; everybody has some defects. This means the love of neighbors begins when we accept the very fact that all human beings have good side and bad side”, Kim remembered saying this himself.

The discussion at the district service (kuyok service) moved on to the way of loving neighbors.

“Fine, but how should we love neighbors?”, one university co-ed asked.

“Any volunteer?”, a young man challenged smiling.

“I agree that we should accept everybody as he or she is. But is it possible? Are we not all jealous of others for their wealth, power, fame, beauty? There is a Latin expression saying that “human being can become righteous, but remain sinful”. (Justifica Simul Pescatore)

We are jealous of other’s glory, power, wealth and fame, because we are human beings. Therefore, the love of neighbor cannot be materialized without love of God. You see, to accept others, one has to be humble; one can become humble through God’s grace.

In other words, before you love your neighbors, you must pray to God so that you become humble, accept other as they are and try to do something  for their wellbeing”, preached an elder.

(다음 호에 계속)

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