Only care about your own hurt

Only be responsible for your own life

Be careless about your responsibility to your family

And be careless to those who were once close to you

Do whatever feels right to your own eyes

Follow your own pleasures

Go sell your family short

Put others between yourself and your own family

Blame the family for alienating you

Keep lying about how family treated you

Only recall the negative and forget the rest

Keep believing there is nothing wrong you’ve done

Don’t listen to your father

Don’t listen to your mother

Keep wasting your life

Keep yoking with pigs

And keep doing what comes easier for you

Rather than taking up the highest responsibility

Rather than doing the more important thing even if it’s difficult

Rather than doing the right thing even when it hurts

You’ve decided to listen to the devil

And do the worse thing because it hurts,

Because you don’t understand, and because you are a fool

May the wind of dust blow through all your life

May the locusts eat away decades of your life

May only tears fill your eyes with no end in sight

You have brought it to yourself

Because you decided not to forgive

Because you decided not to let go

That’s the very definition of hell

And you’ve decided to go there yourself

It’s never too late to turn to the right path

Forgive, and you will be forgiven

Repent, and you will be received

내가 일에 전념했던 사이 첫째가 중학생이되고 곧 있으면 아이들이 크고 떠나면 같이 보내는 시간이 없어질 것 같은 위기감을 느껴서 매주말마다 하나씩 돌아가면서 일대일로 같이 나가서 점심 식사를 시작했었다. 그런데 몇 주안가 아내가 매주 왜 돈낭비를 하냐며 질타하기 시작했고 나는 그 소리가 듣기 싫어 아이들과의 일대일로 만나 대화하며 식사하는 것을 그만두었다. 아내도 마음 한편으로는 자신과 같이 나가지 않고 아이들과 나갈려는 남편에 대해 언짢게 생각하는 것도 있겠다 싶지만 아이들과는 고등학교 다닐 동안의 4년의 시간만 있었던 것… 물론 친구들도 만나고 그런 시간이 많겠지만 중학교때 주말에 돌아가면서 아빠와의 대화시간을 마련했다면 지금처럼 아이들이 다른 사람들로 부터 더 영향을 많이 받는 딸들이 되지 않고 아빠에게서 부터 더 많은 것을 배웠던 아이들로 성장했었을텐데 한는 마음이 앞선다. 사춘기시기라기보다는 조금 늦은 감이 있고 다들 성인이 되면서 부모들이 공통적으로 느끼는 부분도 있겠지만 나름 결정하는 것이며 삶의 방향을 잡고 있는 아이들을 보며 아쉬운 마음이 더 들고 스스로에게 화가 나기까지 한다. 아무튼 이런 것을 미리 알았더라면 아내의 말을 듣지 않고 아이들과의 시간을 더 중요하게 생각하고 더 많은 대화를 했었을텐데… 마음이 아리고 아프지만 아이들을 키우는 이 시대는 더 많은 지혜가 요구되는 시대이다. 부모의 은혜도 모르는 사람은 아직 사람이 아니다.

It’s really a bit of oddity to find a modern intellectual animosity against credo, or more commonly called doctrine in traditional Christianity. There is no real good reason for its animosity other than an irrational fear, or hatred for it. It’s a response of pathos than that of logos. Here is why. If credo defines the what of belief, and provides a map, and religio provides a relational context of the belief. Those raising the ire against are more often emphasizing the experiential while they themselves have not experienced it. They are also often not very social, so they’re in a constant longing for a deeper relationship. They have fallen into the trap of believing themselves to have grasped the mysteries, or lost the sense of mystery themselves, so there is no mystery to behold, nor the reverence. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s just like two romantic lovers who wake up to reality after the marriage to find the other person too human. The loss of wonder leads to the loss of the sense of worth they feel for the content. It’s too familiar to them, and often to their loss, they cross the threshold of illusion of having climbed the summit, when they have in fact fallen down the cliff. A leper does not feel not because there is nothing to feel, but because he has lost the ability to feel. They themselves have become the ossified representation of the credo, and what is manifested is a form of self-hatred to rail against others climbing the edifice of the divine, which is supposed to be the object of our worship, or reverence. The source of it begins with a heart that has ossified to hold anything in reverence, or has become incapable of true worship.

It’s sad to hear some to preach in a way as to totally discredit Christian doctrines, or at least speak in a way that could easily yield to such understanding by theologically untrained ears of congregants. The preacher himself may claim to have reached the top of theology and whatnot, but seems to never have had much appreciation nor treaded through an in-depth understanding of systematic theology due to whatever background, upbringing, or education he was fortunate(?) to have experienced in his own life. Does he understand the consequence of such implied imperative to distance from the very tradition of his own theology on the lives and minds of his own congregation? This is very much in tune with the post-modern Zeitgeist of the day, and yet, paradoxically, the preacher claims to a personalized version of a branch of Biblical theology. The apparent lack of metacognition, an aspect of self-aware on his part, at times, is suffocating at the least, and appalling in the best of times.

Oh, a mere mortal, a human. We’re all too apt at holding multitudes of contradictory ideas. Tolerate, we shall, but do we truly know the cost of such misguided rhetoric, or conviction, or whatever one shall label. In this day and age of illiteracy, and sinking of the Biblical authority in all areas of life, we have the workings of very leaders of the church destroy the edifice of millennia while giving rhetorical service to the Logos of the Divinity. The author of De Doctrina Christiana would be embarrassed to say the least when he hears a line such as, “Doctrine divides,” for an echo of Chamberlainian peace of 1938. Christian doctrine has been the tool not to divide, but as a tool of proclamation of truth against heresy. A Christian unity of faith that isn’t grounded in the truth is a unity against God’s truth. On one hand, you want to turn a deaf for once and maintain a level of comfort for communal peace, while in parallel, a corner of mind rationalizes for the other — what more can you expect from a background of liberal theological education. If I had grown up in his cradle, I may have ended up with a similar theological horizon. A mix of simple, inherited faith on the surface that is familiar to the masses, and yet, a forceful inertia of a critical education. But again, one does have to draw a line when it concerns the word of God. In spite of such understanding, I only ache at the famished landscape, a land without much introspection. A land where everyone tries to claim a type of ownership to something different from the tradition, with no understanding of the tradition that’s been passed down to us by God’s providence. How can one appreciate the beauty when, out of ignorance, we’re prone to throwing out the baby with bathwater?