A pack of wolves in sheep's clothing

First of all,, your argument that "the South Korean hostages in Afghanistan were in a business of saving the drowning children from allegators" is ludicrous, hackneyed, untruthful, distorted, and threadbare comparison to the fact.

Everyone in the world knows that they were not in a benevolent and philanthropic mission togive out candies, blankets, and medical help to the Afghan people, but in the eveangelical endeavor of "stealing sheeps from Allah".

They were a pack of wolves in sheep's clothing: A shepherd would wash, comb, nourish, clothe, and comfort a stricken sheep, but he is only interested in shearing its wools, and eventually sheep's body for his meal.

They were there to execute their evangelical mission to proselytize the Muslim Afghans, as if the soldiers from NATO countries are there to put the Afghanistan under the neo-colonial subjugation.

The only difference between the NATO soldiers and South Korean missionaries: the former carries the deadly weapons to kill the native Afghans if they resist or persist.the latter carries the Bible to steal Allah's sheep.

Both are killing and maiming Afghans bodily and spiritually: soldiers die willingly for a tinpot medal and missionaries sacrifice their lives for their YHWH.

Let them enjoy to fullfil their missions and pay the price for it.

Freedom to choose one's religion is non-negotiable in basic human right.

I quote here a Sura from the Quran:

O Unbelievers.
I worship not that which ye worship

And ye whorship not that which I worship

Neither will I worship that which ye worship

Nor will ye whoship that which I worship

Ye have your religion and I have my religion.

There is only one Allah and he is Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.

In other words, you are free and on your own whatever you believe.

아프가니스탄 납치사태에 대해 by 차인표

배우 의 글입니다.

악어들이 득실거리는 어느 강가에 "위험"이라는 푯말이 서 있습니다.
강을 건너던 작은 배가 뒤집혀 아이들이 빠져서 허우적거립니다.
그들만의 힘으로는 도저히 빠져 나올 수가 없습니다.
죽어가는 아이들을 구하기 위해 한 무리의 어른들이 강으로 뛰어 듭니다.
아이들을 한명, 두명 구하던 그 어른들은 이내 악어의 공격을 받아 피투성이가 되기 시작합니다.강가에 있는 사람들은 어떻게 할까요?
그 사람들을 구하기 위해 최대한 노력을 할까요?
아니면, "위험"이라는 푯말이 있는데도 불구하고 네 의지로 갔으니 알아서 해라" 할까요?
혹은 "지금 악어에게 물리고 있는 사람이 나와 같은 종교인가, 아닌가"를 분석할까요?

일면식도 없는 가난한 나라의 어린이들을 돕고, 병든 사람들을 고치고, 사람의 생명을 살리던 착한 사람들이 악인들의 손에 붙잡혀 생명이 위태로운 지금.. 그들을 바라보면서, "유서 쓰고 갔으니, 조용히 죽어라", "내가 낸 세금으로 몸값 지불하지 말아라" 라고 말하는 것은 비겁한 행동입니다.

일면식도 없는 외국인들을 돕는게 밉다면 그것은 이기적인 질투입니다.
그러면, 누구를 돕습니까?
나를 먼저 도와야만 착한 사람들입니까?
내가 먼저 살고, 그 다음 내 부모랑 자식들이 잘 살고, 내 친구들이랑 주변의 내 편들이 다 잘 살게 된 다음에, 그래도 여력이 되면 다른 나라, 다른 민족을 도와야 한다는 것은, 오로지 "나"만을 생각하는 마음에서 비롯된 이기심입니다.
그것은 세상을 향해 긍휼한 마음을 품고, 그 마음을 행동으로 옮긴 스물세명의 소중한 분들에 대한 모함이요, 매도이고, 평가할 가치가 없는 나쁜 생각입니다.

크리스챤을 욕할 수는 있습니다.
우리는 모두 똑같은 사람이기 때문입니다.
크리스챤은 예수님을 닮기를 원하는 사람들이지, 예수님이 아닙니다.
예수님을 닮으려고 노력하는 사람들일 뿐입니다.
그런데, 크리스챤 중에서도, 돌아가신 배형규 목사님과 아직 억류되어 있는 스물두분은 선하고, 훌륭한 분들입니다.

이 분들은 존재함으로써 이 세상을 더 아름답게 만드는 보석같은 사람들입니다.
큰 교회 때문에 상처를 받을 수는 있습니다.
주위의 크리스챤 때문에 피해를 입을 수도 있습니다.
그들이 싫고, 이해할 수 없는 집단으로 보일 수도 있습니다.
그러나, 양을 보고 양치기를 탓하지 말기 바랍니다.
무엇보다 순결하고 깨끗해야 할 양이 더럽고, 지저분 합니까?
새하얄 줄 알았는데, 가까이 가서 보니 냄새나고, 털에는 벼룩이 있습니까?
순할줄 알았는데, 손을 내미니 그 손을 물어 버립니까?

그 더럽고 사납고 무례한 양을 거둬들여 보호하고 사랑하고 인도하는 양치기를 생각해 보았으면 합니다.
무엇이 그로 하여금 사랑받을 자격이 없는 양들을 그토록 사랑하게 만들었는지 말입니다.
양치기가 품은 양들은 천천히 바뀌어 나갈 것입니다.
지금은 우둔하고, 못나고, 기억력이 없어서 같은 잘못을 저지르고, 또 저질러 양치기를 슬프게 만들지 모르나, 어제 보다는 오늘, 오늘 보다는 내일… 그렇게 하루에 조금씩 양들은 변해 갑니다.
양은 결국 양치기의 모습을 닮아가게 되어 있으니까요.
순교하신 배형규 목사님이 예수님의 모습을 닮아가듯 말입니다.

God is Bankrupt?

God is bankrupt?

Last week there was a newspaper report that the Catholic Church of Boston diocese was contemplating to file the Chapter 11 protection from the creditors who sued the church for the sexual assaults committed by various Church functionaries and won millions of dollars for the victims.

The Boston diocese that holds over $1.2 billion worth of properties and bank accounts would become a pauper when the Church pays all the claims that filed at the court, and the Vatican is not ready to refill the lost coffer with their treasury from Rome.

To make the matter worse, the Cardinal at the diocese was summoned by the Grand Jury for the questioning whether he was a culprit to place the accused bishops and priests on the carousel transferring from one to other diocese in order to hide them from the victims and the authorities.

As far as the sexual debauchery in Christianity is concerned, no one is absolutely free from sin… that Jesus Christ admonished his followers in the sermon on the Mount: just looking at a woman with lust in his heart was the moral equivalent of adultery.

In this perspective, the church had already spiritually and morally bankrupts and the God’s business surely are destined to bellying up forever.

Are the Protestants any better?

You ask Jimmy Swaggart who got caught in a brothel.T

he following article is about the hypocrisy and duplicity in the Roman Catholic Church in the historical perspective.

Semper Idem (always the same)
The motto of the Catholic Church

“The very essence of the Roman Catholic Church is that it does not change; Semper idem (always the same), that flies in the face of modern society—the same yesterday, today and forever, the same in Washington, Madrid or Rome, the same in the Middle Ages, the Imperial period, or the modern democracy.”

Strangely the recent pedophilia scandals by the Catholic priests were reported by the mainstream media as somewhat rather an aberration that was committed by some bad miscreants than an ongoing systemic and inevitable abuse that rooted in the Vatican’s doctrine of all-male, all-celibate, and all-secrecy culture for centuries.

It appears self-evident that the Church has gone to great length to cover up this problem from public scrutiny through the benevolence of the Catholic tenets of forgiveness, redemption and penance.

The remarks by the Pope and other Catholic hierarchy suggest that the Church acknowledge some of their priests have violated the sacred trust, other bishops tried to deal with the matter with good-intentioned effort but failed to convince the parishioners, and finally the Pope addressed the issue with urging penance, understanding and forgiveness toward the repentant brothers who succumb to mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil).
For the Pope, simple penance that includes recitation of prayer, fasting, and seclusion would cure the criminal sexual conduct of celibate priests.

In addition, the Church was reluctant to go pubic or notify the civic authorities, rather to go directly to the Vatican, a practice of in-house cleansing known as “re-insertion” to quietly shuffle an abuser off to treatment or to other parish and pay and hush the victim up, a systemic attempt to silence the wounds.

No one can pass down the historical corridor of the Roman Catholic Church without noticing a series of rampant sexual misconduct by either the celibate monks or nuns (there were many episodes reported in Europe that the workers found many baby skeletons and bones in the attic, basement or courtyard in the Middle Age monastery and convent during the renovation or demolition works.).

It is a common knowledge among the law enforcement agents that during their frequent “Vice Raid” in the city there were priests, ministers, and evangelists who were caught but allowed to slip away.
This practice was sanctioned and institutionalized through the ”Motu Proprio” decree by the Pope, which has forbidden Catholics to bring a priest into court for any civil crime whatsoever; Catholic cops, judges, or law-makers were forbidden to arrest, try, or make laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome, and for the believers of Catholicism, the Pope is the sole, last and supreme judge of what is right and wrong and is absolutely infallible in all matters of everything and anything.

Considering the reality that the Roman Catholic Church is primarily not a religious institution but a dictatorial priestly empire, the Vatican would prefer to apply the jure divino (divine law) on their subjects to leave them in the court of jure humano (human law).

From the period of the Inquisition through the Protestant Reformation to the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church have fought with tooth and nail to silence the knowledge and truth that Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Giodano Bruno et al, had presented to the public, on the conviction that if the Church’s credo of infallibility could be challenged in the helio-centric concept of universe, it will jeopardize the Pope’s status as a final arbiter in every sphere of human life and as a final sayer in laying down the rules and the conditions for the doctrinal area of Christian life…baptism, confession, communion, penance, marriage, celibacy, education, prayer, and so on.

The Church even have sought to maintain Latin language in sermon and to prevent Bible to be translated into the vernaculars in order to keep their flock in dark and to limit the wider dissemination of ideas, as in England William Tyndale was martyred and John Wycliffe was posthumously brutalized for their efforts to have an English Bible.

The Church also love to be surrounded by the secrecy, as if a totalitarian police state adamantly refuse the right of habeas corpus to its people…for example, the Church has not revealed up until now for 400 years on what specific charges of heresy were based in burning Giodano Bruno alive at stake in 1600, and the latest edition of Catholic Encyclopedia does not mention about the fact that the Church has burned him alive with his tongue tied to prevent him to address the spectators.

In addition, the Church abhor utterly to acknowledge their wrong like a bully at the street corner…and only grudgingly admitted in 1992 after 12 years of deliberation that Galileo Galilei in 1633 was right in supporting the Copernicus’ theory.

But on the Bruno execution the Church have not admitted any wrongdoing and still lamented his intolerance, declaring that “his attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist". (His writings are still on the Vatican’s list of forbidden texts.)

It appears that the Church still have grudge on him not to recant on his theory as Galileo did to avoid the hammer of the inquisition, and the Vatican want to place Bruno even after the execution under the deadly Christian curse: whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.

On the issue of woman priesthood, the Church have adamantly refused to accept the role of woman in the church hierarchy in contrast to the increasing participation of women in the social ladder at the secular world.

The Christian misogyny was aptly described by the Vicar of Crantock in England in early 1900 as follows:
1. Man’s priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then Eve.
2. The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.
3. The purport of creation. The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.
4. Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
5. Woman’s priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.
6. The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands.
7. The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is Christ, but the head of the woman is man.

The Christian doctrines on woman are no less despicable than the Hebrew treatment of women: In Talmudic education on man, Jewish male should not walk between two females, or two dogs, or two pigs and in the same manner males should not allow a woman, dog, or pig to walk between them.

Contrary to the public understanding that the priest celibacy was somewhat sanctioned by the New Testament, the Church’s opposition to priests marriage was based more on worldly materialism than spiritual and anti-sexual dogma from the beginning: since early 11 century the Church was deeply concerned about the properties of churches and monasteries that were owned by the various clerics who intend to pass them on to their children or siblings, and the Church eventually have secured their property under “Dead Hand”, mortmain, placing all the Church estate held without the right of alienation by the “Trinity” Corporation.

Again, the Church would have more control over the priests who are deprived of home and family would lose their national identities, thus more loyal to the Vatican.

In addition to these antiquated doctrines of misogyny, priestly celibacy, and cloistered secrecy, the Church have kept close to its breast tight a cornucopia of nonsense, such as Immaculate Conception, the virgin birth, the Holy Trinity and Pope’s Infallibility.

Four decades ago, the Pope John XXIII convened the Vatican II, the general council of bishops and sought to bring the Church more up to date on the issues of social justice, woman’s role in church, and the choice of native language in sermon.

However, his brief efforts such as giving more authority to woman and laity on the pastoral issues and supporting the Liberation Theology in Latin America was abruptly ceased by the succeeding Pope John Paul II whose homilies are more about the personal sin than the social inequities and injustice, and he has acted, as if a CEO working exclusively for the shareholders, rather to protect the power, properties and interests of the Church than a role of the ombudsman and arbiter of the global affairs.

The Church have gone back to the old business of a diseased institution that do not hesitate to suppress charges against the Church’s wrongs when it could, deny them when it could not, and reach agreements with victims that force absolute silence.

The Vatican is the longest surviving priestly Empire in the human history for almost two millennia, and it has prospered and become stronger through the military-style hierarchical system that denies any reform or change in its dogma, Semper idem (always the same).

Historically, the Church have endured and sustained its dogma through a maze of complex social upheavals, Crusades, Inquisitions, Renaissance, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Enlightenment, Darwinism, and Democracy.

Through their vast breadth of historical experiences, the Catholic hierarchy instinctively understand that the Church become most vulnerable at the every reform movements it ever had attempt to address.

For the Church after preserving centuries of outmoded doctrines of Semper idem, it would be better to ignore the outcries of modern life than bring the Church under the intolerable control of laity.

Just pray, forgive, and forget about the things and a while later the Church remain Semper idem as usual.

Then why change now?

Three Wise Monkeys Plus One

See, Hear, Speak, and Do No Evil
pepesojourner@verizon.net

The orthodox dogmas of Christianity are in tatters, or it is more like confetti now… after early Christian codex known as the Gospel of Judas has revealed that Jesus asked his close disciple, Judas Iscariot to sell him out to the authorities, encouraging Judas that he will exceed the other disciples by doing so.

The Gospel of Judas was not the only manuscript that depicts a portrait of Jesus so at odd with the canonical Gospels…Gospel of Thomas butts head with the Synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel: Thomas’ Jesus never performs a miracle, never calls himself the Son of God, and he never claims that he will have to die for the sins of humanmankind.

Thomas’s ignores the virgin birth and there were no inkling of some impending Day of Judgement.
That’s why early Christian Fathers burned this manuscript and threw it away in the ocean, because it was not palatable to the Emperor, bishops and church institution.

And here comes with a fiction novel “Da Vinci Code” filmed that premiers in May all over the world that makes the Christian orthodoxy run amuck to cast aspersion on the contents of movie.

And the Korean Christian organisations are the first group sounding the battle cry against the release of the Da Vinci Code movie, petitioning the court for a temporary injunction to ban for the domestic show.

In its press release, the Christian Council of Korea (Han-Ki-Chong) said: “We cannot help but have deeep concern that the film may disparage and insult the divinity of Jesus Christ and the truths told in the Bible. The movie will severely infringe on individual’s religious beliefs and will be an obstacle to the Christian Church’s missionary work.”

In addition, the CCK said: the film makes people-to Christian or non-Christian alike-believe that a fictional tale is historical fact.In the first place, it seems absurd and bizarre to hear that the CCK attempts to represent the whole population of the South Korea, Christians and Non-Christians alike, when you take into account the fact that Korean Christians are mere one thirds of the population.

And I pity on them when they worry about their missionary work…if one movie could hinder their endeavor to convert non-believers, their missionary work is not worth a grain of salt.In the Japanese proverbial saying, three wise monkeys are a pictorial maxim…”Mizaru” covers his eyes seeing no evil, “Kikazaru” covers his ears hearing no evil, and “Iwazaru” covers his mouth speaking no evil.

The idea behind the proverb was originated from Indian god Vadjra that if we do not see, hear, or talk evil, we ourselves shall be spared all evil and in the West it is reflected in the English proverb: Talk of the devil and the devil appears.
Sometimes a fourth monkey is depicted with the three others, the last one “Shizaru” covering his crotch: “Do No Evil.”

The CCK plays a role of three monkeys attempting to make Koreans blind, deaf, and mute in their spiritual endeavor that only an imperial religion imposed on their people as humans have experienced in the dark ages and during the Spanish Inquisition.

Since the days of Constantine, emperors, bishops, popes, and rich men have sought the same path of three monkeys in order to co-opt the teachings of Jesus.
As the modern day evangelicals cherrypick the verses of the Bible for their “purpose-driven work”, a majority of Korean churches firmly remains in the realm of the orthodox dogmas and refuses to let their congregants see, hear, speak and do something that goes against the orthodoxy.

The CCK does not want their congregation to be exposed to the Gnostics’ beliefs including the Gospels of Judas, Thomas, Q, Mary Magdalene and Philip that were viewed by bishops and early church leaders as unorthodox and heretical manuscripts.

In other words, they prefer to have a Jesus in the canonical Gospels who could forgive sins and promise an eternal life to a Gnostics’ wandering Jesus who calls for voluntary poverty and is hard on rich men.

And the Church knows that Korean Christians were programmed never to believe that Judas Iscariot was not so much a betrayer of Jesus but an enabler of salvation who facilitates the execution of Jesus at the cross.

In essence, one thing becomes very clear and truthful after the discoveries of many ancient manuscripts about the Christianity: the Bible is not the literal words of God as the fundamentalists claim but a product of religious and political forces in the early centuries that determined which manuscripts should be included in the canon and which should be left out as spurious and heretic ones.

The cherrypicking for canonization was done by emperor, bishops, archbishops, popes, and the institution, and we, the 21st century humans, are asked “Do No Evil” of snoopy, nosy, and gossipy around the unorthodox Gospels.

After all, didn’t the Christianity start as an imperial religion and thrive on for 2000 years?

The Apocryptic Christianity in South Korea

Recently, a mob of hundred congregants from the fundamental Christian Church have invaded the studio of the television station in Seoul in order to block the airing of the documentary story about their preacher who claims he is a Jesus Christ.

However, I assume that no Koreans would be surprised with this act of irreligious thuggery, since they have witnessed countless occasions of religious ruckus in every denomination of every religion in the region.

Neither Korean churches in North America are immune to the violence and the litigation in the hegemonic infighting among factions.
Calling the police during the sermon is not uncommon for peacekeeping mission.

It is a wondrous phenomenon in Korea to have the epiphany of Jesus Christ in every few years and thousands of Korean Christians flock to worship Hims (plural), and Koreans would never cease to produce another Jesus Christ again when He goes to jail or sinks in oblivion.

Historically, Koreans have not had any systematic theology that promises the pie in the sky, that is, the life after death.
Buddhism offers the condolence in sorrows and Confucians teach the perpetual remembrance of the deceased.
Even shamans were helpless and in disarray when the wave of Christian tsunami swarmed over the land piggybacked in GI's duffelbags in 1945.

Christianity promises the continuity of human life even after death…. No matter who you are sinner, cat burglar, murderer, panhandler, affluent, powerful…. very much universal.
The rub here is few Korean Christians recognize that Yeshu was born, lived, taught and die a Jew and He has never meant to create new religion (Mat. 5:17) or His belief was solely based on Judaism whose god was tribal and extremely prejudiced.

The story of Christian god, a sort of decaffeinated god from Yahweh, was told by writers 2000 years ago who believed that the sky was like a dish…you could fly through it and enter paradise. For average Koreans, of whatever religious believers, it is impossible not to know that a man ascending vertically from the Mount of Olives, by whatever means of miraculous propulsion, would pass into orbit.

It also would make no sense if His teachings that were meant for the Jews in the first century were applied to Korean Christians, a type of people whom Jesus never of course envisaged as existing beyond over the horizon of Galilee.

He inhabited a world that was utterly different from our own.
No matter how absurd the Christianity might be, Koreans historically have suffered enough during the Korean War and searched for the most powerful deity to salvage their souls.

The result is our worldly renowned Rev. Sun Myung Moon who is now hiding in the Latin American rain forest.
Therefore, the more a preacher claims is potent, miraculous, imminent, and most importantly alive than dead, the more fanatic congregants rush to an audience with him offering their treasures.

Korean congregants want their preacher a shepherd of sheep, whose ultimate purpose is to shear the sheep for their wool and eventually to sell them for mutton.
The herd is destined for the meat market, and the sheep are not consulted by shepherd when he decides their time has come.

It may not be sinful to become a rich and greedy preacher as popularly believed, granting that Jesus was a rather early version of capitalist (Matt. 6:21).

It is axiomatic that the Korean church prospers when it becomes apocalyptic and eschatological as the flock of simpletons and dittoheads put on blinkers and follow in droves.

The difference between Christians and Muslims

Men are religious through force of habit.
They never pause to ask whether what they believe is true.
After all it was the ancients who invented fables and called them a religion.
Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus Christ) and Prophet Mohammed were great leaders of their people in times of trouble.
More than that, I do not believe.

However, there is one big difference between Jesus and Mohammed: the former tried to cheat us saying everyone of us should be his followers no matter who we are Jews, Muslims or atheists, and the latter Mohammed never asked others, Jews, Christians, or infidels to convert to his religion.

A sura from the Quran I quote here:

O Unbelievers,
I worship not that which ye worship
And ye worship not that which I worship
Neither will I worship that which ye worship
Nor will ye worship that which I worship
Ye have your religion and I have my religion.
There is only one Allah and he is Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet

In another words, you are free and on your own whatever you believe.

In contrast, Christians want us to toe the line under their banner that everyone has to kowtow under the alter of Pope, Pat Robertson, or Billy Graham.

Christianity has had an intrinsic characteristics of an imperial dominance over the humanity that forced us to abandon our freedom of thought and massacred unbelievers thousands times to deprive our human life.

Someone says Englishman had the Bible and Africans had land when Englishman entered the land of Africa, but as soon as Africans begin to have Bible, Englishman begin to have land, all of Africa.

In Seoul, how many churches are there? Thousands? Or ten thousands? T
hat is, Christians have been the advance warriors of Rome, British and now US imperialism.

Fundamentalists on a rampage

Author’s note: Eschatology is referring to “the knowledge of the last things” from the Greek, doctrine concerning the end of history, which include messianism, the Last Judgment, and the final triumph of the faithful.


Religious Fundamentalism, no matter what sect of belief system it belongs to such as Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, is an embattled faith that preaches an ideology of exclusion, hatred, rage and most of time advocates an act of violence against other people who do not conform with their eschatological fanaticism.

And one of the Holy ironies is that these fundamentalists of three major religions are intensively on each other’s throat to claim one’s own righteousness, legitimacy, and authority to a same God who fathers, nurtures, and powers them.

Since people are attracted to a religion in fear of death and the emptiness of cosmos and willing to accept any fallacious beliefs to offset the dread of death and to obtain the assurance of eternity after life, fundamentalism of all faiths are heavily dependant upon an apocalyptic doctrine of eschatology that thrives on the such fear factor and emotional grounds in human life.

Therefore, to a response on 9/11 catastrophe, people listen more to the squealing and hoarse rants of pigheaded Fundamentalists of all faiths that compete each other on the validity of their “end game”.
According to a recent Time magazine poll, more than one third of Americans say they are thinking more about the end of the world, while 59 percent said they fully believe the end-times described in the Book of Revelation will come true.
Nearly 25 percent said they believe the 9/11 attacks were predicted in the Bible.


In addition, there are hundreds of Web sites and bulletin boards, suggesting that the Middle East conflicts is a precursor and proof of impending Apocalypse, and the conservative politicians from the secular fundamentalist circle join the evangelists, rabbis, and mullahs to jump on a heavenly bandwagon to sing along the patriotic game.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

For a brief argumentation with a feel-at-home ambience on the issue, an American brouhaha on the three words of thirty-one oath may be a good illustration to examine how powerful and knee-jerk the Christian Fundamentalists have become in an era of the Crusade against evildoers.

“Ridiculous!”
“Nuts!”
“Senseless!”
“Stupid!”
“Junk Justice!”
“One of the most asinine things I ever heard!”
“Hostile to religion!”

These are the few words that all brands of politicians, mandarins, and evangelists cried out with a cacophony of derision, outrage, and disbelief, when the 9th circuit court of appeals ruled that the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional and can not be recited in public schools because of the “under God” phrase.

First of all, it seems bizarre to see why so many politicians unite to evoke such a harsh reaction to the most elementary democratic principle that the United States is supposed to uphold: a state will not tinker with a man’s religion or non-religion.

Since they would not tolerate to substitute “Under Allah” for “Under God” in public schools with kids from Muslim families, a God in the Pledge refers to a specific God, that is their God and a Christian God, and kids from non-believer’s families suffer from the emotional duress tantamount to the cruel and unusual punishment.

Why should Joe Blow have to pledge allegiance to Jerry Falwell’s or Dubya’s personal God, when he doesn’t believe in anything under the sun?

Is it an unpatriotic act not to believe in a Christian God, when the First Amendment prohibits the government’s endorsement or advancement not only of one religion at the expense of other religions, but also of religion at the expense of atheism?

Is there any difference between the North Korea that force people to worship the Great Leader and the United States that force its citizens to pledge allegiance to a Christian God?

Doesn’t “Pledge under a Christian God” violate other phrase in the Pledge “with liberty and justice for all”?

A Republican Senator crowed: “Our Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves!”

Rather, Francis Bellamy, the author of the Pledge, would do the same roll-overs…a Baptist Minister, who was kicked out of his pulpit because of his Christian-socialist sermon, wrote it in 1892 without referring about God, which was added to the Pledge by the Congress in 1954 during the McCarthy witch-hunt on Commies through the ever-existing lobby group, Knights of Columbus (Catholics organization).

Until the US entered into WWII, the pledge was delivered in a manner in which students were instructed to recite it with their right arms rigidly extended shoulder high as if the Nazi youths swear fealty to Hitler, and the manner was changed to place their hands over their hearts in order to avoid the embarrassment of fascist resemblance.

In the midst of a troubled world, the ritual of pledges gives a sense of social bondage, stability, togetherness, and protection, as in the evangelical church prayers are loudly and emotionally manifested speaking in tongue.

The Christian Fundamentalists are the religious absolutists who reject democracy, religious tolerance, or separation of church and state, and they accept the literal interpretation of the Bible unalterable and the world events dispensational, as if Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists interpret Middle East disputes in an exclusively religious way.

Fundamentalists of all faiths egotistically want to expedite the advent of “the End game” with no reservation or consultation with atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Confucians or whatnots, in a very much self-centered and imperialistic way.

Fundamentalists threaten the whole shebang of the social fabric like a pack of rampaging bulls in the china shop and coerce others and bystanders into a particular action:“You are with us or else”
Christians arbitrarily crow that no saint would get to the Pearly Gate unless he becomes a Christian.

But sorry for half of the Jewish population that have to be sacrificed no matter whether they are proselytized to Christianity or not, because the scenario was already programmed by a Christian God and made an unalterable fait accompli, even though Christian Fundamentalists are the supporters of the Jewish State and become the Christian Zionists.

In addition, these Christian Zionists look forward to the destruction of Planet Earth, funding, supporting, and arming the Jewish Fundamentalists to annihilate or expel the whole population of Muslim Palestinians from the Holy Land.

Thomas Paine once said: “Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.”
In a word, the Christian Fundamentalism becomes a real threat to democracy in the United States.

“Surrender to the will of God”:

The radical Islamic movement like the Khomeini’s revolution in Iran was inspired by the Muslim desire to throw off the Western culture that crept into their mind during the long years of the British colonial occupation and later American hegemonic domination in the region.

By returning to Islam responding to the Mullah’s call to action, word martyr in Arabic means witness that sacrificing is a witness to great Islamic principles, and Islamic jihad has become one of the pillars of Islam.

In Islam, you are an infidel if you do not surrender to their God no matter what and in this sense, all Muslims are fundamentalists.

“ We are Chosen by God”

The basic principles of Jewish Fundamentalism are the same as those found in other two major religions: restoration of pure and pious religious community that presumably existed in the past, and they view the State of Israel, the Jew-only State, as a state of Judea and Samaria that span from Sinai, Jordan, Lebanon, most of Syria and Kuwait.

The orthodox Jews differentiate and value between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews as between a human soul and the souls of cow.
Resultantly, Jews refer Palestinians (non-Jews but their Semite brothers and sisters) a mass of cockroaches, and proudly show the Jewish superiority to the world by squashing them under their boots like Nazis.

A funny thing is the above-mentioned wickedness of the Jewish Fundamentalism is practically unknown outside of Israel thanks to the connivance of the Western mainstream media.

Would it be far too much for the atheists, who believe a God is simply a human construct, to ask?
“Just leave us alone down here on our mother earth, since I don’t know if there is anything beyond.”

The Christian Fundamentalists believe in the Book of Revelation that a God revealed something to man; But that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only.
When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons.
It is revelation to the first person only, say to the Fundamentalist, and hearsay to every other, say to the others or bystanders who consequently are not obliged to believe it.

Soi-disant civilized and Christian states have been spending more than half their revenue on killing other evildoers and infidels in order to right the wrongs as if they think they know the difference, and history shows otherwise: no single item of rights or wrongs has been ever-lasting or non-fading in its content.

Fundamentalists of all faiths believe in a God not of love but of war; they lead us, poor innocent souls, to the doomsday scenario of Armageddon theology in various vogues of Apocalypse Now, Jihad, or Superiority.

After all, YHWH (Yahweh) was a jealous, revengeful, and tribal God that loved to massacre hundreds of innocent men, women, and children in a one stroke.

Finally, here is about the emptiness of human life and the eternal silence of the infinite universe that Blaise Pascal in his Pensees wrote:“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape.Then, I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”

Now, you got that why these fundamentalists hang, feed, and thrive on a macabre and often jiggery-pokery scenario of death and destruction of universe?

더러운 창녀야 ‘유신’ 창녀야!

The following is a symphonic poem written by an unknown Korean lady.

The lady seems to wail over the forgetful mentality of Koreans whose memory span lasts only few seconds.
Are Koreans crazy enough to elect the next El Presidente of a whore whose daddy killed so many innocent people?
Pity on them!

삭정이 같은 팔에 /
‘유신’의 쇠몽둥이를 들고 /
영양도 보충해야지 /
미국의 입에 붙은 밥알도 /
떼여 잡수시며 /
'정체성 수호’의 험난한 길에 /
한 몸 던진 박 따님 좀 보소 /
입 가졌는데 왜 말을 못하겠냐 /
입을 가지고도 할말 못하던 /
암흑시대 ‘유신’의 배설물 /
‘국보법’ 한 자도 고치지 못한단다 /
아무리 밝은 세상이라도 /
눈 가졌다고 다 보겠느냐 /
죄 없이 끌려가 졸지에 /
‘간첩’이 되고 /
‘빨갱이 용공분자’가 되던 /
반세기의 ‘유신독재’의 진상 /
파리 눈곱만큼도 파헤치면 안 된단다 /
보기 드문 ‘효녀’일러라! /
그런데 저게 뭐냐 /
무덤 속을 뛰쳐나온 아비혼백 /
웃다 울고 울다 웃으며 /
소리소리 지르는구나 /
저주 받는 이 아비 뒤를 /
기를 쓰고 따르는 /
갸륵한 효녀야 ‘유신’효녀야! /
아비를 개처럼 쏘아 죽인/
미국에 치마폭 들어 보이는 /
더러운 창녀야 ‘유신’ 창녀야!

Christianity sanctioned human slavery

Sorry, for wrong Quotes...

Sorry, I have made wrong quotes regarding the slavery.
You may look into the following verses:
Old Testament: Leviticus 25: 44-46
New Testament: Ephesians 6: 51 Timothy 6: 1Titus: 2: 9-10

Thanks for your addendum on my article about the ‘Mayflower’, the Pilgrim Ship that had later renamed ‘Meijbloom’ and engaged in the slave transportation from African Continent, which I was totally unaware of the real history of the Ship.

On your query about my suggestion that Christianity sanctioned the slave system, I am not surprised to find your consternation, since there has been a wide currency that Christianity challenged whole institution of slavery with the brotherhood of love.

I also gather that you have never opened and perused the Book of Old Testament (Numbers 31:17-18) or you have never heard from your pastor about the New Testament (Col. 3-22) that urged the slaves to obey their master.

During early Christianity, entire Dark Age, the Protestant Reformation, and American Civil War, the verses in the Bible, especially Apostle Paul’s words, were accepted as the inerrant words of God that have been used throughout history to justify the slavery system.

Beginning with Paul, St. Augustine considered slavery divinely ordained and the prime cause of slavery is sin, that is, the sins of the enslaved not the enslaver.

In the late sixth century, the church owned hundreds of thousands of slaves, who worked its immense holdings in Gaul, Italy, Greece, Syria, Egypt, and northern Africa, and the papacy was the preeminent feudal overlord who keeps many heathen slaves.

In the time of Martin Luther, he was a champion for the cause of his rich and powerful patrons, the German Princes and vehemently denounced the half-starved, overtaxed peasants who dared to rebel.

In America, Christianity was the main pillar of Black slavery, interpreting the Bible view of slavery as follows: the Almighty, for-seeing the total degradation of Negro race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japeth, doubtless because he judged it to be their fittest condition.

Even in North Africa, the Christian missionaries were involved in the slave trafficking with the European slave traders.

In sum whether during the late Roman Empire or in the antebellum United States, Christian teaching offered an ideological justification for the worldly interests of an atrocious slaveholders.

Few of us were taught such things that I mentioned above in Sunday school or any other academia, and I have been spending most of my time unlearning what I had learned from the established institutions.

It is mind-boggling to see that, in the twenty-first century of the evangelical Bible belt of the US and in some Korean Christian Community, the biblical literalists are clinging tightly to the verses that meant for the first century people and leading us to believe Paul’s words are the words of God.

Finally, I would like to close the article with an episode you might have interested in the well-known and much-loved gospel hymn ‘Amazing Grace’: this hymn was penned on the deck of a slave ship with its human cargo chained both legs and hands below deck by the ship’s captain named John Newton who later became an ordained minister of the England Church.

And many black people love to sing in the Church in order to console their desolate fate without knowing that the hymn was the product of the slaveholder’s jeremiad in the rough sea for the safe voyage of their slave ancestors.

Indeed, Life is full of ironies.

Ship "Mayflower" becoming A Slave Ship

Dear Pepe

I was born, raised, and grew up in the predominantly Christian environment studying the social sciences in post-graduated level, so I have eventually become a life-time Christian by default.

And now I shudder in shame and degradation that I was not aware of “a real history” until I happened to visit this website today and read your eye-popping story about the Thanksgiving Day saga.

I had a good turkey dinner with my friends of choir members from the Presbyterian Church last night, thanking our God for his benevolent gift without knowing that the Day was originated from the celebration in which the English Christian Puritans safely returned from their sortie of massacring 700 Indian men, women, and children.

I am sure neither one at the party would have known the real history nor care about it even if one ever knows about it.

I would like to add one more real history about the ship “May flower”…it was re-named as the Meijbloom (Dutch for May flower), continued to make history.
It reached Africa and became one of the first European ships to chain and carry enslaved African men, women and children to the Americas.

By the way, you briefly mentioned that Christianity supported the slavery system…would you elaborate on this matter, ‘cause I always believed that Jesus my God stands behind the indigent, powerless, and sick people.

Thanks

Connie

A Pensee on the Thanksgiving Day

“History will be kind to us, Gentlemen, for I plan to write it.” Winston Churchill

A majority of Christians around the globe are taught at their Sunday school about the Thanksgiving Day as follows: in early 1630s the English Pilgrims, who escaped from the religious persecution, arrived in “New World” sailing aboard the Mayflower from Holland and settled in Plymouth Rock (Massachusetts) where the Pequot Indians called it home for hundreds of years.
And the Pilgrims thanked God for divine favors and goodness feasting and celebrating with the native Indians, as the day was first officially proclaimed a National Holiday by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637.


It is said that history is largely a one-sided record composed by the victor…. this is well demonstrated by the sanitized, filtered, and falsified history of triumph of the Western Civilization, as we termed the invasion of European colonists toward America a “discovery” and our sense of the past is manufactured for us mostly by history’s winners.

Worst, when this filtered history becomes a mainstream, orthodox, or conventional ones that carried through a process of repetition by “expert, historians, and other reputed institutes”, people readily accept it as true and legitimate description of the past.

As human history is written and marketed such a politically constructed way that we are effected not to enlighten ourselves in understanding the past but to solidify the current political, social, cultural, and religious climate.

When, however, someone gives a revisionistic and dissident view on the mainstream myths, people who were given a steady diet of orthodoxy become more alert and interested on unlearning the dis-information that they have been exposed during their entire life.

Heterodoxy always offers more diversified prospect in life than orthodoxy, as pagan religion is more generous and tolerant toward other religion than a monotheistic religion like Christianity.

In this perspective, you never lose anything but surely gain some truth about the origin of the Thanksgiving Day as you lend your ear toward my following spiel, though your pastor or teacher definitely cry wolf.

As we learned at school that Columbus was a great Navigator who “discovered” Americas, omitting an atrocities that he gave to the Arawak Indians in return for their kindness and tributes, Christians were encouraged to know only the good half of what took place in the Pequot Indian village in 1630s.

They were not told that the Thanksgiving Day was celebrated to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their annual green corn dance—Thanksgiving Day to them—in their own house.

Indians were ordered by the English Puritan Christians and Dutch mercenaries to come out from their home and were shot down, while others were burned alive in their wigwams.
Irony is these Indians were saviors for their Puritan attackers who were starving to death when they arrived in the land, and the Indians taught the Puritans how to navigate the waters, fish and cultivate corn and other vegetables, and brought deer meat and beaver skins for the hungry, cold Pilgrims.

How did the Puritan Christians justify the killing of their saviors, the Pequot Indians?

They appealed to their sacred Bible:
Romans 13: 2 “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
Psalms 2:8 “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

The book of Romans was said to be written by Apostle Paul who counseled the total obedience to the very state, Rome, that crucified his savior Jesus…his apologia is that since there exists no authority sans an act of God, it follows that those who do not submit to earthly rulers are in effect resisting celestial authority and shall receive to themselves damnation.

The Puritan Christians also believed that they were entitled to possess the whole land and property on earth and celestial space sanctioned by the Great Real Estate Agent as if the Zionist state of Israel has been rampaging through the Palestine, killing, maiming and massacring innocent Arabs men, women, and children.

As Jews cite the words of the Pentateuch as the guide to their conscience and early Christian Fathers supported the state power of Roman Emperor like Nero as a necessary tool to survive, Puritan Christians justified the massacring of Indians as a divine instruction from the heaven.

In Europe, both before and after the Reformation, whether in Protestant or Catholic countries, the established ecclesiastics sided with the princes against peasantry, the established powers no matter whether it is despotic, marauding, or exploitative ones, showing little or any sympathy for commoners, as we can see with Paul, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.

That is, contrary to conventional belief that Christianity ameliorated the plight of the poor, the Christian Church always stood behind the state powers collaborated with Kings and Emperors as a “minister of God” and supported class oppression, slavery, sexism and ecclesiastical autocracy.

Recently, in his apologia on the issue of supporting and praying for Bush fils, a Korean pastor (Lim Hyeonsoo) at the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto (www.lkpc.org) assured his congregation that it is a Christian duty to bless President Bush for his endeavors no matter what, if he is not against our Christian power.

It is not surprise for him to quote the same verses of Romans 13:2 in his sermon that early Puritan Christians employed in massacring 700 innocent men, women, and children…if Bush is with us Christians, he is a minister of God no matter what he does, invading other sovereign country, destroying the property, killing innocent civilians, and torturing prisoners of war…all are sanctioned by God that we should pray and support for his power.

“Torquemada Lim” seems to be calling for a warrior Christ whose fire and brimstone breathe on the necks of infidels as a squadron of Apache helicopters of US invading forces drops a dozen of phosphorous bombs on the fleeing Muslims.

In sum, history has been kind to the Christians because the keepers of faith were also the keepers of records in the past human history as commoners remained illiterate and were not even allowed to possess the Bible, and clergy had monopoly over the written words educating laymen a predominantly dogmatic theological nature and the book burning at the libraries was one of early Christian Father’s task to suppress the heterodoxy.

To term “a real history” revisionism is a pap to whitewash the silenced, hidden part of mainstream history, and it is also important to relay a real history with the standard history in order to see a broad social implication.

Did I give you a bitter taste for your feast of turkey at the Thanksgiving Day?

The Spiritual Arm-twisting

Emphatically, I would like to dispute against your notion that “speaking in tongues” is within the category of “contemplation” even though I would not argue against the origin or the nature of glossolalia that you mentioned.

In short, an act of “speaking in tongues” is, I think, an antithetical to contemplation per se, and I would rather go further defining “glossolalia” an antonym of contemplative practice.

In the first place, two words, glossolalia and contemplation, are, by nature and by definition, describing utterly opposite means…in their attempted desire to meet a god, the former is demonstrated by an unintelligible words and unrestrained display of ecstatic movement and the latter is almost and always non-active and without words.

As glossolalia is derived from Greek, glossa (tongue) and lalia (to talk), a person engaging in glossolalia relies constantly on foreign, gibberish, meaningless, or unintelligible tongues “in order to aspire to get in touch with god” (to borrow from your words).

On the contrary, the contemplatives employ the form of meditative prayer like a close relationship between two friends who can sit enjoying each other’s company.

It seems utterly bizarre to read that you are eager to incorporate glossolalia into the realm of contemplative life…

why?

You may put “speaking in tongues” as one of the components of worship traditions, as contemplative prayer, flagellation, fasting, and other physical pains have been accepted to various religious groups a modus operandi to achieve a goal to meet god.

Would glossolalia become more respectable, honorable, intelligent, scholastic, or civilized methods in search of god, if it were classified a contemplative prayer?

In the secular society, gibberish utterance is referred to self-hypnoticism, schizophrenia, hysteria, or dementia that require the engaging person receiving the clinical treatment if he or she shows psychopathic symptoms.

In other words, an extraordinary level of engaging glossolalia may be construed an act of craziness possibly harming others life.
I personally witnessed long time ago that one of my friends had gone in delirium after attending the two-week sessions of Christian revival service, destroying all of his belongings and finally tried to harm his sister with a sharp object, and he was placed into the psychiatric ward permanently.

Imagine two groups, one sitting on a hemp mat dressed in white robes or saffron meditates opening their mind without any preconceptions to the truth, while another jumping and gyrating up and down with no constraint, hollering the gibberish and rolling on the floor along the guidance of a charismatic leader…it’s beyond anyone’s imagination that two are on the same boat.

Yes! They are on the route to meet a god, but their paradigms to achieve their goal are quite different from each other.

Therefore, I think that an attempt to incorporate glossolalia into the category of contemplation is like “spiritual arm-twisting” in order to elevate and exalt “gibberish” up to a pedestal where the contemplatives have been enjoying for centuries.

The Contemplative Prayer vs. Glossolalia

By Paik Sanghoon

Thank you for your bringing up the question again for a better apprehension of the part of what had been said in the lecture, the relation of contemplation and glossolalia.

And I also appreciate your fine understanding of the relation of Christian meditation and Buddhist practice and of great values of monasticism that speak critically to the contemporary world.

First of all, I have to acknowledge that my use of the word “contemplation” in my lecture had to be limited to an aspect of contemplation, that is, the way in which one sees into thing as they are, and this inevitably limited use might cause confusion and bewilderment in you and/or among others attending.

As I then said, the word “contemplation” has been variously used in the Christian tradition depending on the employers of the word. I would like to trace its first form back to the desert fathers that first appeared around 3-4th centuries in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine.

The way of their meditation is called “prayer of heart,” since their primal focus was on the inner, individual communication with God through their hearts.
They tried to introspect with keen awareness of God’s presence and aspired to get in touch with God going beyond human words and language, because they were well aware that God could not be fully grasped with human words and language.

This is why they prayed not with their heads but with their hearts, and how their way came to be called “prayer of heart,” which has definitely been considered a way of contemplation.
When I am willing to put “glossolalia” into the category of “contemplation,” I have the desert fathers and their “prayer of heart” in mind.

Glossolalia is the phenomenon that comes as one goes beyond one’s words in his or her communication with God, despite the fact that he or she is actually speaking something with his or her lips.

In other words, the person in speaking in tongues is praying not with his or her head, but with “heart.”
Say, one’s lips are vibrating and yet his or her heart is touching upon God or God’s presence.

In this sense, glossolalia can be, I assume, a way of contemplation. And, as such, contemplation belongs not only to the Catholic Church tradition but also to the Protestant tradition where some sort of different types of spirituality are preferred to those of the Catholic tradition. (My idea that glossolalia is part of contemplation is original.)
I hope this will be a help to you.

The Contemplative Prayer vs. Glossolalia

In his lecture at the Gillbott Church in New Jersy, the Director Paik, a staff member from the Agape Christian Healing Center, has addressed that the Center seeks the healing process in search for “true self” via “contemplative prayer”.

After an hour-long lecture, there was a session of question-and-answer, in which I inquired about the glossolalia that the evangelical churches strongly advocate their membership in their prayer meetings.

Frankly speaking, I was at the loss when Mr. Paik replied that the glossolalia is one of the forms of contemplative prayers, contrary to his introductory paper that the contemplative prayer is not achieved by talking but by observing self, true or false.

It seems bizarre to me that the “speaking in tongue” has anything to do with the word, “contemplation”…I do believe you could not possibly achieve to observe, think, reflect, or consider thoroughly about anything at the same time when you were in a trance state or an episode of religious ecstasy.

I would rather consider the contemplative prayer in relation to the philosophy of silence, Buddhism or Christian monasticism.
It is true that Buddhist chants and Benedictine monk sings in their ritual as Christians sing hallelujah at the service.

But both monks are called “contemplative orders” that engage in the ascetic life in search of nirvana and a state of grace, committing themselves to poverty, celibacy and obedience challenging the secular culture of money, sex, and power.

In our modern time, people are fed up with the excessive consumerism and reflect dissatisfaction toward the mainstream religious practices.
In response to these tendencies, the mega churches have sprang up like the wild flowers in the spiritual desert, where glossolalia plays a major role enticing the like-minded people in the gated spiritual community.Contrary to this communal fellowship of mega churches, some intellectuals began to show interest in the “contemplative life”, the possibility of individual consciousness apart from the communal whole.

Some says that life is like water: it takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured; remove the vessel and it is lost.
What we are seeking are vessels into which to pour the chaos of life.
If we could pour the chaos of our life into the vessel of contemplative life, we might shape our future life quite contrary to the contemporary life of money, sex, and power that we have now.

In this perspective, Mr. Paik’s assertion that glossolalia is within the boundary of contemplative prayer is simply a misstatement or a disservice to the contemplative life.

I expect your clarification.

The Lex-talionis and Turning the other cheek

The Lex-talionis and Turning the other cheek

“My point is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are dumb enough to take them literally.” John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus?

Exodus 21:22-25…if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Matthew 5: 38-41 You have heard it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. But I say to you. Do not resist one that is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

Quick Google search on lextalionis describes as follows: While all cultures have some system of social regulation and conflict resolution, law is a distinct phenomenon in that it is written and administered retribution and conflict resolution. T

he earliest human legal systems were almost universally forms of lex talionis, or "the law (lex) of retaliation."
The lex talionis is a law of equal and direct retribution: in the words of the Hebrew Scriptures, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an arm for an arm, a life for a life."

In the Old Testament, God allows you to exact the compensation in kind according to the law of talion when you were harmed by others, and this retributive justice as well as various aspects of the Laws in Exodus is similar to Babylonian laws known as the Codes of Hammurabi that is a few centuries older than the Bible.

The Hammurabi Code is derived from the even older Sumerian law codes that meant punishment and justice must be evenhanded and compensation should be equal to the crime though it is harsh and cruel by modern standards and meant also to limit people from exacting vengeance out of proportion to the party that did harm to them.

According to the pulpit that was eager to “decaffeinate” an image of habitually vindictive, prejudiced, violent, and provincial Yahweh to a loving, caring, universal, and benevolent Jesus to all mortals, it was said later in the New Testament, Jesus overturned the Hammurabi Code of vengeance in kind and advocated passive and non-violent responses to evil…Jesus seemed to ask Christians to become the cowardly doormat, to counsel submission to power, and to corroborate with the oppressor, if you read it without the consideration on the real world where Jesus lived, taught, and died.

Namely, the “turning the other cheek” passages in the Bible has been taken for granted by a majority of Christians around the globe as the teaching of Jesus Christ to submission to the powerful, and the Church had actively collaborated with the state power to suppress the revolt of the poor and oppressed people, claiming that “the powers that be are ordained of God” (Romans 13:1-2)

When the Bible was translated from Greek to English in 1604 by the 54 court scholars hired by King James, people believed in a mythical creature like unicorn, a horse with a single horn in the center of the forehead, mentioned by Deuteronomy 33:17, as if for most contemporary American Christians the Bible is a book written by God in English (Korean Christians are not so much knowledgeable in reading the Bible as they have been manufacturing a “Moonie” variety of Messiahs who are more palatable to their religious taste.

In addition, it is safe to bet that these hired court translators had endeavored not to irk the King James in the process of the translation and had made sure to conform with the absolute submission to the monarchical power.

Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought about how we read the contexts of the Bible…. One is that we read it words for words, parables for parables, and chapters for chapters, as if it is infallible and inerrant as the words of God and no questions allowed to be asked.
They insist that the Bible was written by humans inspired and revealed by the Holy Spirit, which text is prophetic, instructional, and devotional, as if American Christians take it like a sacred totem or flag.

They try to emphasize the biblical relativism to the contemporary society in literal sense that we can employ the same methodology as the first century people functioned and experienced in their values, moralities, and modus operandi, because the Bible is the words of God, irrevocable and transferable to any stages, circumstances, periods, ages, or generation.

This group does not give a slight consideration on the linguistic dilemma destined to occur in the translating process between original manuscripts and translated copy that results in a failure to convey the precise meaning or sense of words.

The other is that since the Bible was not a document concerned with history but a vast collection of sublime myths and metaphors, it is vital to approach the Bible with the allegorical, spiritual, and mythical ways in order to solve the many enigmas of Christian stories.
Since, this group argues, there are huge variations in languages among human races, say, even between Jews and Christians who share the Scriptures, the words of God vary considerably depending on whom you ask.

This group also says the Bible was a collection of little books, an archive of a thousand years of writings that was borrowed from Sumerican, Babylonian, and Egyptian mythologies, and people are free to interpret the words of God according to the light of their own understanding and conscience, and they began to question the authoritative views of their inherited institutions, the Churches.

Take for example in analyzing the biblical text about the “Turning the other cheek”…. When we read it literally, it recommend that you accept the blow no more attempt to block the strike than offer the striker other cheek for an extra blow, when anyone strikes you on the right cheek.

However, when you take into account the social, political, and cultural background of the society where Jesus was mentioning, the whole shebang of “turning the other cheek” in the authorized scenario by Church collapses miserably.

First of all, you try to strike someone in front of you on his right cheek and you only are able to hit him on his left cheek, not on his right cheek in the right-handed society where you do not use left hand except to wipe your rectum after you relieve yourself.

Therefore, the only way you could strike the right cheek of other with your right hand would be with the back of your hand…which means the blow is not intended to cause a fight but give an insult to other.

There is also another factor to be considered…the backhand slap does not normally occur between friends or comrades on the same social rung but is intended to scold the inferiors like masters backhand slaves, parents children, or Romans Jews.

Here Jesus was addressing the unequal relation between Roman soldiers and his disciples, Jews, in which Jews would never think of retaliation against the Roman oppressors unless they prepare to be hanged.

So when the Jew offers again his left cheek to blow to the Roman soldier, the oppressor cannot slap on the left cheek of the oppressed with his backhanded blow but to strike it with a fist, which means the oppressor and oppressed are on the same footing, negating the caste system of the society.

In another word, Jesus never intended to counsel his already humiliated people to surrender to the mercy of oppressor again, but to embarrass and harass the oppressors forcing them to acknowledge that Jews are also human beings as they are.

Embarrassing the oppressor and the powerful can be applied to the another misunderstood passage of the Bible about “offer your total garment to your loan shark”…Jesus never intended to put his people in double jeopardy by advising that you give out your coat and underwear in toto when you are sued.

Instead, he was telling how atrocious and merciless the society his people live and the possible way his people react against it. (You can imagine an awkward and comic court scene in that a stark naked man standing in front of an embarrassed creditor holding a collection of dirty rags from the debtor in a society where nakedness is taboo in Judaism.)

On the matter about offering two miles instead of one mile, Jesus was again talking about the relationship between the oppressor, Roman soldier and the oppressed, his Jewish people…since Jews do not have a choice to say no to Roman soldier who orders them to carry their duffel bags, they offer more help that Roman soldier can not accept without violating their military rule that allows their knapsacks to be carried by Jews only one mile.

In other word, Jesus knew that Jews do not have the luxury of refusing the Roman oppressor’s demand, his advice was: embarrass, lampoon, and afflict the Romans as far as Jews could possibly inflict upon their oppressor by turning the other cheek, becoming stark naked, and walk an extra miles.

That is, Jesus never taught his people to submit themselves passively to power as popularly believed in the pew, but rather he advocated the non-violent resistance against the institutionalized oppression.

“Resist not that is evil” is simply a translation error from Greek to English that caused by the lack of consideration on the social context at the time.

So which group do you prefer to join with? The literalist or the metaphorist?

Personally, I cannot imagine myself to dance, like rabbits, with a bunch of “Holy-rollers” with abandon in an evangelical mega-gathering in the Cincinnati Sport Auditorium.

On the bizarre Holy Landing of Jesus Christ

On the bizarre Holy Landing of Jesus Christ on the Korean Peninsular.

“Life is full of accidents.” Avram Noam Chomsky

When, Chomsky, the great literati and distinguished linguistic Professor of MIT, was asked by the Radio Host, Amy Goodman, in her “Democracy Now” program (WBAI NY 99.5 FM 9 to 10 am Mon. to Fri.) that how a Jew like him in an orthodox community ended up an anarcho-syndicalist who defends the rights of the Palestinian Arabs, he answered with a chuckle: “Life is full of accidents. I even went to Kibbutz Farm in my early boyhood, wishing to be a vanguard for the defense of the state of Israel.”

You generally assume that you never know what’s ahead in your life unless you, like John Darby and Cyrus Scofield, hold a devout faith in dispensationalism.

Personally, I have never intended to depart my native country cheerfully and willingly, until I was forced to fly by night hastened with the unbearable pressure from the military dictatorship, in which later I fully appreciated the involuntary departure a chance to be fully becoming a human being of a different kind.

On the premise that life transforms itself by chance without any precondition or presupposition, it could be assumed that Jesus Christ, by chance, had manifested incognito in Korea as far back in 1592, while the locals, bereft of knowing his arrival and his salvation, were unfortunately busy in a pagan rite of serving various Gods in the form of rocks, trees, waterfalls, or mountains anything goes around them as far as it has, they believed, a potency.

Confused? Or Baffled?
You may cry out “What the hell are you talking about?” And I would not blame you, ‘ cause you probably never heard about the hidden and bizarre story of the Jesus’ Landing on the Korean peninsular during the “Im-Jin-Wae-Ran”, Japanese invasion of Im-Jin Lunar Year in 1592.

And you, as a Christian, may understand NOW why our ancestors had lost the war; Jesus Christ blessed Japanese Army!
And your ancestors were damned by Jesus Christ at that time!

The popular history taught us, Korean hoi polloi and Christians, as follows: Christianity was first introduced in the late 18th Century by the group of court scholars who came back from their diplomatic posts in China, laying the original foundation of Catholic Church in Korea.

And later in 19th Century, through many persecutions up until the demise of Lee Dynasty and during Japanese occupation, the Christianity in Korea has ebbed and flowed leaving many martyrs across the country.
Now Koreans boast the full strength of 14 million believers, 35,000 churches, and 50,000 ministers.

According to the Jesuit Society in the Vatican, a Jesuit priest accompanied the invading Japanese Army during their sortie in 1592 to the war front in Korean peninsular as an army chaplain, performing a rite, mass, baptism, and praying for the Japanese soldiers of Christian converts including General Konishi Yukinaga, one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s commanding officers.

Of course, the Jesuit priest did not land in the peninsular to send the message from Jesus’ Gospel to the locals, but to bless the invading Japanese soldiers for their wanton business to kill and defeat our ancestors in the name of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Let us put ourselves for a moment in the shoes of our ancestors in 1592 who were massacred by the Japanese invading forces blessed by Christian God…as if in the Iraqis positions in 2004 encountering the massive onslaught of the US Marines protected by the very same God’s grace. (Please read my previous article, Jesus Christ with a thousand faces.)

Were our ancestors by chance less fortuitous and salvageable than Japanese converts, because Koreans were a bunch of barbarians who are heathens and Japanese were civilized converts genuflecting under the altar of the Pope?

Were the Japanese forces more successful and combative than the Korean army was, because the former were blessed and protected by Jesus Christ?

Were our deceased fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters themselves responsible for not knowing the Holy God of Jesus Christ who walked, preached, and died on the Gethsemane garden thousands miles away thousands years ago?

What were their sins to be suffered, persecuted, and killed by the ‘God-blessed’ Japanese invading forces?

One asked a baffling inquiry toward a minister.“Where are our deceased ancestors in the Kingdom of God right now, heaven or hell?”
The minister replied with a sigh, “ they, I guess, are in the middle between heaven and hell, hanging precariously on not to fall from the God’s grace, since they were not the believers but the heathens..”

One quizzed again with a puzzled face, “but, my dear minister, how did they know Jesus existed thousands years ago far away from their land?
How in the hell were they able to know a chap in the Galilee was a messiah? Were they to blame for that sin?
How long do they have to suffer again in a vacuous afterlife?”

The minister was almost in tears, “Son, I am sorry but I guess they have to hang on tight until Jesus Christ manifests in the Second Coming, and no-one knows but Himself when it will happen as the Bible said so.”

For a majority of our ancestors, the world was full of gods who could stay around the corner of house, street, or living quarters where they strongly believed that they were safe and happy in the execution of their daily life.

They adopted a particular concept of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically acceptable…their gods were simply an embodiment of their needs and wishes.
If a god does not work for them, they simply replace it with another more potent and benevolent one without hesitation.

So the story goes that we Korean Christians now are one out of every three Koreans who adopted the Christian god, Jesus Christ a god of our life while our non-believing ancestors have been hanging on limbo for thousands years in the middle space of heaven and hell.

Was it not an unusual and cruel punishment for our deceased ancestors, even if life is full of accidents?

Someone in Church should address the issue on the fate of our deceased ancestors and let them RIP (Rest In Peace) in the netherworld.

Let us pray for them, for they are, I believe, still crying a jeremiad loud enough to reach our contemporary descendants who only care themselves of the salvation in the name of a triune God.

Jesus Christ with a thousand faces

‘People do all evil things willingly and cheerfully when they do it with the religious conviction.’ Pascal

For many Christians worldwide, Jesus Christ is an embodiment of their values that manifests where they stand in their political, social, cultural and other arenas, and the Christian debate about Jesus Christ has special importance for all of us here in the United States and around the earth, even if you are not a Christian but a Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic, or atheist.

Since the head of Superpower State publicly announced that he consults with his God before executing his overall policies, domestic or foreign, our lives are directly influenced by the prevailing image of his Jesus Christ, whether it is a vindictive warrior god or a benevolent messiah.

Christians for thousands years were never agreed upon who Jesus Christ really was…they even could not agree with what his skin color was…for Caucasians Jesus was depicted as a blondie, fair-skinned and blue-eyed chap, for Black Africans he was a dark-skinned, flat-nosed and muscular bozo, and for Asians he would be more affable for them to see him a round-faced, high-cheek-boned, and yellow-skinned ‘yangbannish’ gentleman, even though he surely looks like a brown-colored Palestinian Arab or Oriental Jew.

However, there is just one exception: Korean Christians are somewhat exceptionally in accord with the image of Caucasian Jesus figure, considering that they are eager to surgically change their facial and bodily figure more closely emulate Caucasian styles of big-nose, round-deep eyes, chiseled-out cheekbones, and dyed blond hair, and on the other hand, they are the renowned creators of Korean messiah as we have witnessed numerous epiphanies of Messiahs like Rev. Sun Myong Moon, et al.

There are also billions of non-believers on earth who mind their own business and live a life in the quiet and peaceful ambience, who see Jesus Christ one of such religious persons as Buddha, Mahatma Ghandi, or Dalai Lama, and some take Jesus nothing more a cult leader roaming in the rugged hill of cow-town Galilee in the first century than Sun Myong Moon is a tribal chief in the modern day Christianity.

It is safe to say that the non-believers are treated as the religious underclass that were denied the public service of help and assistance by the deity-sanctioned Government due exclusively to their non-believer stance even though they are the same taxpayers as Christians.

Even among the many sects of Christian Community, whether it is Catholic, Baptists, Methodist, Pentecostal, Protestant, or England Church, there is no consensus about the spiritual image of their God, Jesus Christ…. Some believe in Jesus as a supernatural Son of God in human form, offering immortality to everyone who repents, while others emphasize His righteousness clothed in a warrior armor plate that massacres evil-doers and brings down the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in an Apocalyptic way.

Recently, some of highly acclaimed Christian theologians look at their faith anew rather in a fashion of the allegorical, spiritual, mythical approach to the Bible and to Christian faith than a literalistic, popularized, and historical approach to the sublime truth.

They think that early Christian church had made a fatal and fateful error by turning the Christian drama and myth into a form of history in which Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a flesh and blood person, becomes a God of Holy Father, Son, and Spirit.

And when these various image of Jesuses enters into the living arenas of human society, a Jesus metamorphoses into a thousand faces, sometimes creating a good rapport with your neighbor or oftentimes wreak havoc on others.

For example, if you image Jesus a greatest example of perfect love for others, you never intend to harm others in whatever situation that has rarely existed in human history.
But you willingly do any evil things to harm others, when you portrayed him a warrior God like Yahweh in the Old Testament, as we have been experiencing in its entirety of our life.

Therefore, when the political ideology intersects with a warrior image of Jesus Christ, as in the evangelical fundamentalism in the Bible belt of the USA, that has helped to elect the political leader, it is not difficult to see a striking reflections of the evangelical agendas that the Government aggressively imposes it on all spectrums of the society, domestic or foreign.

Often combined their apocalypticism with demonization in a way that promotes hatred and violence against an other, the evangelical fundamentalists employ their Endtimes scenarios drawn from the Book of Revelations justifying hostility toward the Islamic world in general and sanctioning the heinous crimes of the Israeli government toward Palestinian Arabs in particular.

When God goes to war like in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, chances are you see the image of Jesus Christ in a lens through which the vindictive, rapacious and violent God of the Old Testament (Numbers 31:17-18) thunders to their Israelites ordering to kill all men, women, and children of Midianites, not because they are wicked or evil-spirited people but are what they are.

A loving, caring, and concerned God of Jesus Christ disappears in a fog of patriotic and gung-ho marches toward the holocaust of all human species.

The following story is a good manifestation of a Jesus Christ with a thousand faces.The News delivered by Agence France Presse in Iraq just before the US Marine stormed the Sunni City of Fallujah, destroying the entire city and hospitals with massive bombing campaign and massacring hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of bringing in “democracy” to that city.

Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians NEAR FALLUJAH -

With US forces massing outside Fallujah, 35 marines swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect them in what could be the biggest battle since American troops invaded Iraq last year.

Men with buzzcuts and clad in their camouflage waved their hands in the air, M-16 assault rifles beside them, and chanted heavy metal-flavored lyrics in praise of Christ late on Friday in a yellow-brick chapel.

They counted among thousands of troops surrounding the city of Fallujah, seeking solace as they awaited Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's decision on whether or not to invade Fallujah.

"You are the sovereign. Your name is holy. You are the pure spotless lamb," a female voice cried out on the loudspeakers as the marines clapped their hands and closed their eyes, reflecting on what lay ahead for them.
The US military, with many soldiers coming from the conservative American south and Midwest, has deep Christian roots.

Comforting

In times that fighting looms, many soldiers draw on their evangelical or born-again heritage to help them face the battle.
"It's always comforting. Church attendance is always up before the big push," said first sergeant Miles Thatford. "Sometimes, all you've got is God."

Between the service's electric guitar religious tunes, marines stepped up on the chapel's small stage and recited a verse of scripture, meant to fortify them for war.
One spoke of their Old Testament hero, a shepherd who would become Israel's king, battling the Philistines 3 000 years ago.
"Thus David prevailed over the Philistines," the marine said, reading from scripture, and the marines shouted back "Hoorah, King David," using their signature grunt of approval.

The marines drew parallels from the verse with their present situation, where they perceive themselves as warriors fighting barbaric men opposed to all that is good in the world.
"Victory belongs to the Lord," another young marine read.

Their chaplain, named Horne, told the worshippers they were stationed outside Fallujah to bring the Iraqis "freedom from oppression, rape, torture and murder ... We ask you God to bless us in that effort."

Holy oil

The marines then lined up and their chaplain blessed them with holy oil to protect them.
"God's people would be anointed with oil," the chaplain said, as he lightly dabbed oil on the marines' foreheads.

The crowd then followed him outside their small auditorium for a baptism of about a half-dozen marines who had just found Christ.
The young men lined up and at least three of them stripped down to their shorts.
The three laid down in a rubber dinghy filled with water and the chaplain's assistant, navy corpsman Richard Vaughn, plunged their heads beneath the surface.

Smiling, Vaughn baptized them "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." Dripping wet, corporal Keith Arguelles beamed after his baptism.
"I just wanted to make sure I did this before I headed into the fight," he said on the military base not far from the city of Fallujah.

By Agence France Presse

Do you want willingly and cheerfully to share the same oil with you that the US Marines anointed to their body and the same image of Jesus Christ that was portrayed by them during your entire life?

Do you claim the Jesus of US Marines a Christ of yours?

Your answer tells the world who you are and what you are, and it doesn’t matter how Jesus Christ looks like, Caucasian, Afro, Mongolian, or Eskimos.

A "Flesh and Blood" Jesus Christ

Josephus (c37-100 AD)

Please note: The following article is from one of the Internet sites that clarify the disputation in regard to the Josephus’ historical recording about Jesus Christ. Please read carefully and I hope this article settles the matter regarding the Josephus’ assertion that Jesus existed a “flesh and blood” historical man in the first century.

Flavius Josephus is a highly respected and much-quoted Romano-Jewish historian.
The early Christians were zealous readers of his work.
A native of Judea, living in the 1st century AD, Josephus was actually governor of Galilee for a time (prior to the war of 70 AD) – the very province in which Jesus allegedly did his wonders.

Though not born until 37 AD and therefore not a contemporary witness to any Jesus-character, Josephus at one point even lived in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle.

Josephus’s two major tomes are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews.
In these complementary works, the former written in the 70s, the latter in the 90s AD, Josephus mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era.

At face value, Josephus appears to be the answer to the Christian apologist’s dreams.
In a single paragraph (the so-called Testimonium Flavianum) Josephus confirms every salient aspect of the Christ-myth:1. Jesus’s existence 2. His ‘more than human’ status 3. His miracle working 4. His teaching 5. His ministry among the Jews and the Gentiles 6. His Messiahship 7. His condemnation by the Jewish priests 8. his sentence by Pilate 9. His death on the cross 10. The devotion of his followers 11. His resurrection on the 3rd day 12. His post-death appearance 13. His fulfillment of divine prophesy 14. The successful continuance of the Christians.

In just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – now that is a miracle!

BUT WAIT A MINUTE ...

Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defenses against pagan hostility makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.

The third century Church ‘Father’ Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus.
Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defense of Christianity.

He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this ‘golden paragraph’ from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal.
In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was “not believing in Jesus as the Christ.”Origen did not quote the ‘golden paragraph’ because this paragraph had not yet been written.

It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen’s third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum.

Consider, also, the anomalies:1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?
The absurdity forces some apologists to make the ridiculous claim that Josephus was a closet Christian!

2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been ‘the Christ’ surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone else’s (Pilate’s) story?
In fact, Josephus relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus!
He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed ‘Egyptian Jew’ messiah.
It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.

3. The passage is out of context.
Book 18 starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 AD, talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes, and a sect of Judas the Galilean.
He discusses Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on.
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind.
Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested.
Pilate sent spies among the Jews with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus continues:‘And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...’
Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be ‘another terrible misfortune.’
It is only a Christian who would have considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.
Paragraph 3 can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter.
It flows better without it.
Outside of this tiny paragraph, in all of Josephus’s voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere.

4. The phrase ‘to this day’ confirms that this is a later interpolation.
There was no ‘tribe of Christians’ during Josephus’s time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:’... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.
”This is the stuff of Christian propaganda.

REALITY CHECK

In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine.

Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD.
This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.

Whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians.
Yet unlike the works of his Jewish contemporaries, the histories of Josephus survived.
They survived because the Christian censors had a use for them.
They planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus Christ !

Finding no references to Jesus anywhere in Josephus’s genuine work, they interpolated a brief but all-embracing reference based purely on Christian belief.

Do we need to look any further to identify Eusebius himself as the forger?

Sanctioned by the imperial propagandist every Christian commentator for the next thirteen centuries accepted unquestioningly the entire Testimonium Flavianum, along with its declaration that Jesus “was the Messiah.”

The Liberation Theology and Cultural Evolution

Dear Pastor:

Thank you for your insightful remark on the liberation theology.

“Truth is never absolute, since new discoveries could always replace the old; it has to be demonstrated objectively and measured by its effectiveness in the practical world”

Please let me tell you how I characterize human religions, especially Christianity.

A. It is important to know that the Christian theology could never be absolute and should evolve constantly to meet the human demands of particular times, places, and circumstances. And the liberation theology is a product of the particular human society where people believe Jesus Christ not only a Savior but also a Liberator.

B. The image of God also varies along the way how people born, live, think, hope, interact, work, and die in its particular fashion. As idea of God formed in one generation by one set of human beings could be meaningless to another generation, God must be a working asset to people who believe in Him or Her.
In other words, people discard their deity without any hesitation when it is irrelevant and powerless to their communities.

We, human beings, evolve constantly via natural selection during our lifetime…one is biological evolution based on genes and the other is cultural evolution replicated by “memes”*.

The term “meme” refers to an element of culture being passed on by non-genetic means from one mind to another mind, as examples of memes are; ideas, values, theories, beliefs, practices, habits, fashions, music, computer virus, etc.

While genes can only vertically be transmitted from parent to child, memes can horizontally be transmitted between two individuals that memes are more similar to parasites or infections.In other words, memes are the conveyors of customs and traditions… all kinds of cultural information passed down through repetition and imitation.

As Christianity was a “memetic ancestor” to Catholic Church, the “memetics”, the imitative process, allows people to add or delete memes resulting in formation of complete different religious entities like the liberation theology, the Unification Church, Hutterites, or FKUCC, propagating within the basic umbrella of Christianity.

In this imitative process, one idea may become extinct while other ideas will propagate and mutate through modification, as the liberation theology disappeared from the Latin American society due to the strong opposition from the papacy, while the evangelical fundamentalism spread like a wild fire in the US, where the John Winthrop’s catchphrase in Massachusetts Bay in 17 century, “A city on a hill”, was revived and propagated throughout the Christian community, mutating for worse in the forms of “Manifest Destiny” and “American Exceptionalism”.

I, an ex-mandarin worked at the intelligence loop during the Gen. Park’s military dictatorship, am totally with your assertion that it was inevitable and necessary for the South Korean people to seek for salvation in the social justice, poverty, and human rights of the liberation theology, a sort of spiritual refuge in the oppressive gulag.
The General arrested, jailed, tortured, and executed thousands of innocent people in order to keep his regime under the tin pot dictatorship.

However, you may wonder how the popularity of the liberation theology has gone awry and “winner-take-all” modality prevails now in the same society, where people line up for the plastic surgery to change their flat-nosed Chink-like figure for the white Caucasian style in its imitating and replicating process.

For worse, the South Korean people are infected with virus, “invasive memes”, of electing the daughter of the tyrant, Gen. Park CH, for next EL PRESIDENTE.

Is there a kind of vaccine, like antibiotics, that can protect from the noxious memes to catch on us?

Pepe Sojourner

*The term “meme” was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, the British ethologist who used the term in his book “Selfish Gene”.

“Yes, Everything is for Sale”

September 2, 2006
Dale Han

Frankly speaking, I was initially amazed, secondly dismayed, and lastly disheartened by your remark on the “commercialization of education” that you are less concerned and worried about the our college education system being run commercialized like the free market system of the supply and demand principle, and you would like to leave the matter in the invisible hand of God.

For the worse proposition, you’d like to take the commercialized education for granted a fait accompli, as you get more in return if you pay or invest more, and you disparaged educator’s buzzword, “education is not preparation for life; education is life itself”, as a tall catchphrase, adding that “a real life” begins at the society where we are becoming the self-made man.

It is true, I admit, that we live in a society that fathoms life in terms of numbers, like polls, statistics, ranks, percentage, dollars, Dow john’s averages, etc., and our education institution manufactures years after years a massive number of robotic technocrats who value a thing only in terms of numbers not in terms of humanity.

When you wander along the bustling street of the Fifth Avenue in the New York City, you’d find that a majority of pedestrians, drivers, deliverymen, and messenger boys on a bike, talks incessantly on a cellular phone with someone invisible on the other end of line…they are inattentive to or not interacting with their physical proximity.

Among the whole enchilada of diverse groups, you don’t have difficulty finding a gaggle of school age youngsters attached to iPod, CD cassettes, Cell-phones, or other gadgets in their own world…It’s a universe of “my space” where gadgets that are made to enhance greater communication only serve to separate us from humanity.

It is no wonder why we do not care about Others, those not in “my space”…we could not fathom how someone lives with one dollar a day at the opposite side of the “my space”, because we live in the world where one dollar does not bring much or many things to us.

As long as they do not infringe on “my space”, they are irrelevant and not being counted as numbers.
When we reflect on the purpose of education, one may say that it trains youngster’s mind in the facts, rules, formulas, numbers, and precepts in curriculum.

Other may say that it stretches the mind of students giving them skills to inquire and discuss ideas and beliefs that they can participate with their neighbors.

The bottom line is how we can balance above-mentioned reflections in its implementation…And I find that we tilted our system too much toward the former case that weighs more on numbers and formulas: and the latter case is more harder to be implemented, because it is a process, not a formula that can be compressed into a book or reflected with numbers.

In which term do you wish your sons and daughters after the school year being portrayed by your neighbors in the community?

A robotic technocrat with a prestigious diploma who lives only in his space?

Or a man of intelligence whose ideas and beliefs encompass for the betterment in the entire world of humanity?

Probably, I gather that you appear to reflect the money-grubbing characteristics on behalf of the ugly Korean immigrant community, in which a majority wishes to see their kids to be a dumb family doctor, an ambulance-chasing lawyer, an ever-squabbling stock, insurance, and mortgage broker, a spurious financier, an egotistic and Hispanic-bashing “deli-CEO”, a swaggering and unconscionable Church elder, etc., whose training had more to do with numbers and less to do with humanities.

Inshallah!!