Whose God is it anyway?

Whose God is it anyway?
November 28, 2002

I understand that the religious people, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, believe in their God based on something called Tanakh, Bible, or Quran, an anthology, a collection of many small books, and they all appear to share somewhat related Gods of their own with each other, while they all are determined to kill, cripple, and tear each apart in order to propagate their own God as a one, only, perfect, and universal God.

The Jew’s “Word of God” become the Muslim’s heresy and the Christian’s interpretation of it is perceived the Jew’s nightmare.
Therefore, no one religion, unbeknownst to many believers, can be studied in isolation from others.

For example, Jews introduced their God based on Torah, Prophets, and Writings, a collection of books that Christians call it Old Testament, in which Christians read in relationship to prophecies of the Second coming of Jesus Christ and Jews make no connection between them or interpret them differently from the Christian views.

As Hillel, a Jewish rabbi in the first century said: “Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you,” Paul, a Pharisaic rabbi and a real starter of Christianity, turned Hillel’s dictum on somersault, saying “Do unto others as though would have them do unto thee”…a subtle difference in expression, but an analogous quote as Confucius said: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others,” or Aristotle in quote: “”We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.”

Christians in the era of Jesus Christ (they were all Jews then, not Christians as same as if Rev. Sun Myong Moon is a Christian now, not a heretic.) follow the words of the same One God of Judaism that the Old Testament prescribes to them, only adding a sequel of New Testament later, which tells the story of Jesus Christ as Son of God and He was, surprisingly unknown to many Christians, a devout Jewish rabbi who was born, lived, taught, and died a Jew.

The early Christians called themselves Jews and thought of themselves Jews until when Christianity became the official state religion of the Rome Empire in which the separation between the Jew and the Christian was accomplished.

Muslims, a group of devout Semites in the God of Abraham, initiated, six hundreds years after Jesus Christ died (if he ever existed), their Islamic religion based on Quran that was given to their prophet Muhammad, and surprisingly Quran mentioned about Moses (he is known as “Musa" in Islam) a few hundreds times.

Muhammad was even inspired by an apparition called “Gabriel”—one of the most important of the Christian angels—to spread the message from “Allah”, that is, the conceptual root in Islam can be found in Judaism and Christianity.

However, when you put a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian, a gathering of the devout and intelligent adult, in the same room and ask them whose God is right one, they can not agree with or can not agree to disagree with each other and get involved, at the drop of hat, with the fist fight like a bunch of red-faced teenagers.

The Jews boast: It is inconceivable to talk about history, world, or religion without Jew.
Therefore, there is no human being on the face of this earth exempt from the Jewish influence and Judaism.

The Christians, with superman, Uncle Sam, on their back, embark on the mission to perfect the world under the rule of the Christian God at any cost, as if all humans are wicked when they do not hold to the Christian religion.

The Muslims, while not denying their root in patriarch Abraham, demand an abject obedience to the Supreme Being of the Islam faith, “Allah”.
Islam is proclaimed the third and final revelation to God, warning infidels like Christians and Jews against the danger of false prophets and calling them to surrender to Allah or else.

No one denies the fact that more people because of religion have been murdered, tortured, maimed, hated, and humiliated than for any other reason in the history of man, and there has never been a genocide which was not fueled by religion, the most crippling detriment of them all to the human evolution.

Despite its otherworldliness, religion is entirely man-made and highly pragmatic human activity that could be justifiably abused in the name of God.
If we, humankind, endeavor to cultivate humanism among us, instead of surrendering to God or Allah, as an attempt to find the raison detre in life, all the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists could agree with or agree to disagree with each other without the fistfight, because there are no perfect Gods but only the perishable mortals who share the equal and universal destiny without any exception.

Why do we need a God that makes us kill each other?How about the humanism sans the worship of God as our religion?

What is the Trinity?

What is the Trinity?
December 20 2002
A Canadian

This, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, thing is always bothering me.
Does anyone have any good explanation about it?


Paul JDSN replied:
December 21 2002

Trinity has to do with an important Christian belief that God was and is present among humans and will be so.
God showed his love through his son, Jesus and also does in his Holy Spirit. Therefore, in Trinity, we see that God is not just foreign to us because of God’s absoluteness.

Christianity believes that God share the suffering of human in history. And God will guard and lead us to the right way through his Spirit.
In common sense, we think that we must serve God because God is divine while we are mortal.
However, in Christianity, God firstly serves human beings participating in our concrete context.

So, we call God as a gracious thing. It is better that you understand Trinity not as a dogmatic formula but as a metaphorical description.


Let us make a modern God
December 31, 2002

“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”


In a reply to an inquiry by “a Canadian” in this forum, Paul JDSN tried, rightly and scrupulously, to avoid to define or elaborate the dogmatic theology of the Trinity that the Christians for centuries have struggled to understand the nature of God as three persons in One, as early as in1533, the Protestant reformer, John Calvin had the Spanish theologian Michael Servetus executed for his denial of the Trinity

As Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon in the fourth Century, had lamented that the mystery of the Trinity was not only indescribable but also incomprehensible to human mind, the belief in Trinitarianism was the most difficult idea for the human beings to comprehend or imagine the existence of three beings, each of whom is equal to the three, that was shoved into the Christian throats by the arbitrary decree of early Christian fathers.

Jesus Christ, according to the pulpit, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third…each of these three persons is God…that is, God exists in three persons, but these are not three Gods but one God revealing himself in three person.

In secular understanding, the son (Jesus Christ) is just as old as his father, and the father is just as young as his son.
The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both.
Therefore, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.

Then, who has developed this absurd doctrine that only the gaping primates may take it in their belief system?

It is true that the doctrine of the Trinity is important to Christianity, not because, as Paul indicated, God showed his love through his son Jesus and his Holy Spirit, but because it has tremendous implication for how one understands the Jesus who had two natures, one human, the other divine, or who had one nature of a fusion of human and divine…that is, the doctrine of the Trinity consolidated a human Jesus Christ evolving to a divine Son God when the Church functionaries under the guidance of the Pope and the Roman Emperor in the fourth Centuries voted to crown Him with divinity.

In the early Christian history, the theological doctrine of Trinity was hotly debated among the bishops and priests, and the Emperor of Rome, Constantine wanted to settle the matter once and for all, convening the first Ecumenical Council of the Church in 325 CE (Common Era).

At the meeting, the Pope Celestine the First declared, with the help from St. Athanacius, the bishop of Alexandria, that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who has the same nature or essence (homo-osion) with God the Father, therefore, one in being.
Other bishops argued that the Father and the Son were “homo-iousion”, similar essence or nature, which means that the Son might be similar to God, not really divine.
Then, the Pope won and other dissenters were exiled…

The argument over the divinity did not stop there…Nestorius, a monk of Antioch later became the archbishop of Constantinople, taught that Mary, the Mother of Jesus was only the Mother of the human person in Jesus, therefore, she should not be called the Mother of God, “theotokos”, but only “Christokos”, the Christ-bearer.

This caused the widespread anger among the people that gave rise to convene the Council of Ephesus under the guidance again of the same Pope.
He declared that in Jesus, there were two natures, one human, one divine, but united in only one person, the divine Person of the Son of God, and since Mary gives birth to a person cum divine Jesus, not just a body or a soul, Mary could truly called “theotokos” the Mother of God.
When the decision was announced, the people of Ephesus went wild with joy, parading the streets with torches, dancing and singing with abandon.

In the modern society that values only rational or scientifically demonstrable truth, the dogma like the Trinity, Immaculate Conception, Original Sin, or Armageddon theology, becomes an idiotic and absurd problem that occasioned the beau-coup conflicts among the nations.
The Middle-east conflict is one of the human conflicts that was caused by the ego-centric dogma of the Chosen Land by the Chosen People with the financial help of the Christian dispensationalists who believe in a God not of love, but of war, the Armageddon theology.

And I read loud and clear that Paul JDSN sought to bypass the dogma and got back to the fundamentals of all religions; the love of God manifested through the Prophets, Jesus Christ, or Muhammad, warning “a Canadian” not to understand the Trinity as a dogmatic formula but a metaphorical description.

However, Paul’s assertion, that “God shares the suffering of human in history, therefore, God is a gracious being”, appears to be a highfalutin self-adulation in his endorsement on the Christian dogma of the Trinity.

From the beginning, God was fundamentally to blame all the sufferings of the human race, contrary to what Paul JDSN proposed and believed…I only can surmise…that God shares the human pains through his Son to be nailed in the cross for the salvation of the human kinds (the Trinity).

Though I am not using the Bible as a proof-text, God was a slow-learning, bungled, and absent-minded scientist in the creation of the universe, later drowning 99 percent of his masterpiece, human races save a sample of them, and “re-peopled” the world.
(Noah’s cargo list did not have the name of dinosaur since at that time America was not discovered yet?)

Of course, I am sure Paul JDSN believes that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present entity in our life…in this perspective, nothing could happen without his knowing beforehand that it did happen in human history.
Nothing happens without His permission and acquiescence; nothing could happen if He chose to prevent it.

This means that God in his loft throne in the sky allows knowingly inflicting a one-two punch on his products whenever he feels fit to do it, and He is one and only responsible for everything that happens.
And curiously, the devout Christians still adore Him as our Father, “who serves firstly human beings,” as Paul JDSN gloats..

Throughout the human history, people commit as many deicides as they required to do when God no longer works for them, and there is no reason why we should not throw the absurd and idiotic dogmas, like the Trinity, into the dustbin of ancient nonsense and wash our hands.

The concept of loving God is simply impossible to accept after we had experienced the Christian Crusades, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, to name the few human catastrophes, and we are still on the war wagons to kill each other, who I believe are perhaps the poorest of all the invention of God.

If Christ had really been God, He could have proved it, since nothing is impossible with God.
The pulpit where Paul JDSN works says for thousands years He is coming, He is coming, He is coming, and He still seems to be thinking about it for six thousands years and could not make up His mind, while for hundreds of generation billions of His loving products die and go to hell.

Why don’t we kill this slow-moving, unresponsive, and lethargic god of Bible and replace it with more fast-moving, efficient, and passionate god of the present day?
After all, Jesus Christ, the Bible God was born and lived in a cow town, and died ignominiously there only knowing that there was no other place beyond the horizon of Jerusalem, let alone the stupendous nature of real universe.
Let’s create a modern God, folks!

A Pensee on the Thanksgiving Day

A Pensee on the Thanksgiving Day
November 25, 2004

“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 views 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 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” a 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?



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


To Connie:
November 28, 2004

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.

Life is full of ironies.

Pepe
November 28, 2004


November 15, 2000A day to give thanks?by Ward ChurchillThanksgiving is the day the United States celebrates the fact that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony successfully avoided starvation during the winter of 1620-21.
But from an American Indian perspective, what is it we're supposed to be so thankful for?
Does anyone really expect us to give thanks for the fact that soon after the Pilgrim Fathers regained their strength, they set out to dispossess and exterminate the very Indians who had fed them that first winter?
Are we to express our gratitude for the colonists' 1637 massacre of the Pequots at Mystic, Conn., or their rhetoric justifying the butchery by comparing Indians to "rats and mice and swarms of lice"?
Or should we be joyous about the endless series of similar slaughters that followed: at St. Francis (1759), Horseshoe Bend (1814), Bad Axe (1833), Blue Water (1854), Sand Creek (1864), Marias River (1870), Camp Robinson (1878) and Wounded Knee (1890), to name only the worst?
Should we be thankful for the scalp bounties paid by every English colony -- as well as every U.S. state and territory in the lower 48 -- for proof of the deaths of individual Indians, including women and children?
How might we best show our appreciation of the order issued by Lord Jeffrey Amherst in 1763, requiring smallpox-infested items be given as gifts to the Ottawas so that "we might extirpate this execrable race"?
Is it reasonable to assume that we might be jubilant that our overall population, numbering perhaps 15 million at the outset of the European invasion, was reduced to less than a quarter-million by 1890?
Maybe we should be glad the "peaceful settlers" didn't kill the rest of us outright. But they didn't really need to, did they? By 1900, they already had 98 percent of our land. The remaining Indians were simply dumped in the mostly arid and unwanted locales, where it was confidently predicted that we'd shortly die off altogether, out of sight and mind of the settler society.
We haven't died off yet, but we comprise far and away the most impoverished, malnourished and disease-ridden population on the continent today. Life expectancy on many reservations is about 50 years; that of Euroamericans more than 75.
We've also endured a pattern of cultural genocide during the 20th century. Our children were processed for generations through government boarding schools designed to "kill the Indian" in every child's consciousness and to replace Native traditions with a "more enlightened" Euroamerican set of values and understandings.
Should we feel grateful for the disastrous self-concept thereby fostered within our kids?
Are we to be thankful that their self-esteem is still degraded every day on cable television by a constant bombardment of recycled Hollywood Westerns and television segments presenting Indians as absurd and utterly dehumanized caricatures?
Should we tell our children to find pride in the sorts of insults to which we are subjected to as a matter of course: Tumbleweeds cartoons, for instance, or the presence of Chief Wahoo and the Redskins in professional sports?
Does anybody really believe we should feel honored by such things, or by place names like Squaw Valley and Squaw Peak? "Squaw," after all, is the Onondaga word for female genitalia. The derogatory effect on Native women should be quite clear.
About three-quarters of all adult Indians suffer alcoholism and/or other forms of substance abuse. This is not a "genetic condition." It is a desperate, collective attempt to escape our horrible reality since "America's Triumph."
It's no mystery why Indians don't observe Thanksgiving. The real question is why do you feast rather than fast on what should be a national day of mourning and atonement.
Before digging into your turkey and dressing on Nov. 23, you might wish to glance in a mirror and see if you can come up with an answer.Ward Churchill is professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. He's the author of "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present" (City Lights Books, 1998) and "Struggle For the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in Contemporary North America" (Common Courage Press, 1992).

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

On the bizarre Holy Landing of Jesus Christ on the Korean Peninsular.
December 6 2004

“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 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.

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 face.)

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, were they simply not knowing Jesus was existed thousands years ago far away from their life? 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 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.

Pepe Sojourner

The Lex-talionis and turning the other cheek

The Lex-talionis and Turning the other cheek
December 26, 2004

“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. The 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 “Moony” 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.
I’d rather choose to get exiled to a hole in the Gitmo Prison Camp in Cuba.

Pepe Sojourner
December 26, 2004

Dear Andrew
April 7, 2005

Thank you for your rebuttal on my article “Whose God is it anyway”

First, in your disagreement on the vicious nature of conflicts among religion, you suggested that Christianity is never intended to “kill, cripple, and tear each apart…...” and Jesus Christ himself has never done this type of thing.
I assume that you have never read the Old Testament that Christianity embraces as the word of God, in which pages after pages are inundated with a smorgasbord of killing, raping, crippling and tearing apart episodes.
On the “turning the other cheek”, you attempt to tell me that Christians are meek, gentle, non-violent, and passive folks to harm no one. Hell no, I don’t read the Bible in your fashion that most of orthodox Christians have been braying for centuries. (Please read the article below, the lex-talionis and turning the other cheek that I have written sometime ago)

Secondly, on the similarity of metaphors among religions….I did not intend to invalidate the Bible by saying that there are similar metaphors among various religion, but to challenge the infallibility and inerrancy of the biblical quotes that some of word were borrowed or plagiarized from the ancient text or code, as Sigmund Freud said “the Bible was a total plagiarism of Sumerian and Egyptian mythologies.”
Do you know that the stories in the Bible—from the star in the east to Jesus’ walking on water, from the angel’s pronouncement to the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, from the temptation in the wilderness to the changing of water into wine—already existed in the Egyptian sources?

Thirdly, on my emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus Christ….my point is Jesus Christ has never meant to create a new religion, Christianity, out of his religion, Judaism, and there were no Christians during his life-time. All his disciples and followers were Jews who never thought they were Christians.
Jesus Christ was no more a rabbi to admonish his fellow Jews than Sun Myong Moon is a Christian minister to say something not palatable to the orthodox Christian church.
I borrow what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17; “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
He was born, lived, taught, and died a Jew, not a whit a Christian or even a Christian God, and he was crowned a divinity by the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals in the third century, as we see now a new Pope will be chosen by a pot-bellied and red-capped fat cats in the Vatican…and Christians are queuing up to see the dead Emperor of Vatican, crying and praying for his resurrection.
What a pity, pity, pity….

Fourth, on the historicity of Jesus Christ, you said, “there is an overwhelming body of evidence (besides the Bible)….it’s interesting to hear that you have an undeniable evidence that Jesus really existed in the first century.
However, if you try to quote me from the meager number of non-Gospel mentions of Jesus—a sum total of twenty-four lines from Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus—then you don’t have to tell me about it, because I take their brief mention on Jesus as spurious forgery, interpolation, or at least not indisputably reliable and authentic, and I don’t take the Bible a news story or the history book that depict the events and occurrences in the early era, but a collection of small books that tell the mythical, allegorical, and symbolical episodes.

Fifth, you want to know about the hegemonic intention of Christianity over other infidels….I gather that you don’t read, listen, or watch the mainline media, otherwise, how do you not know GW Bush, the CEO of Christian faith, prays on his knee every morning before he executes his domestic and foreign policies of “you-are-with-us-or-against-us” in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Don’t try to be innocent because you did not know—there is a vast difference between not knowing and not caring about what UNCLE SAM has been on the neo-colonial mission, a Christian faith-based one that has been going on for centuries.

Lastly, you indicated a case of Rwanda massacre that was not fueled by religion…frankly speaking, I do not know much about the killings between Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda except they killed each other along the line of ethnicity.
As you see me accepting humanism as my religion, Rwandans may take ethnocentrism as their religion, viewing alien groups or cultures as their enemy as if the US Marines are encouraged to dehumanize and desensitize Arabs as “sand-niggers”, synonymous to the American niggers who were lynched and hung on the bridge as recently as 1960s.

I welcome your high opinion again.

Jesus Christ with a thousand face

Jesus Christ with a thousand face
December 1, 2004

‘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 who 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 face, 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 deomonization 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 face.

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 that the US Marines anointed to their body and the same image of Jesus Christ that was portrayed by them with you 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.

By Pepe Sojourner
December 1, 2004

Jae MJ Lee wrote in reply


Well, until I'm given access to this website, here it goes. I admire Richard, because he always approaches with love and kindness as Christ our Lord would. I'm not quite there yet. Wow, what a post. Insightful, incredible dynamic thoughts and ideas that are tied together extremely cohesively, a plethora of point of views, well researched, intellectual yet easy to understand for the common man, just plain well thought out. A tremendous essay. Almost thesis like. This piece would certainly garner top grades at any fine educational institution. Lesson learned. Abosolutely nothing. I find no value whatsoever in secular philosophy, which depends the fallable human being to create perfect hope and love for the world. Secular philosophy may tickle and scintillate my brain, but in the end, and after 15 minutes of reading this, it amounted to same thing once again, just plain psychobabble. I wonder if you have read the Bible. I assume you haven't. Because my Jesus I read in the Bible has but one face. Read it to understand for yourself. The Jesus spoken about in the philosophies of the world, does have a thousand faces. God has given you the free will, and placed you in a country, where you can ponder the kind of philosophies you do, instead of worrying where to get your next meal, how to put life back together after a tsunami, how to survive during a 100 year civil war, how to avoid rampant disease. God has given us so many blessings, day after day, that we have taken it for granted, and now demand even more. When the simple things we need and should be grateful for is right under our noses. Well, keeping true to myself, this response is wordy. Let me end this way. Pepe, I thank you for posting your message however. It's that kind of philosophy that encourages me to go back to the Bible and pray. I struggle daily, to keep myself from becoming like the Pharisees and high priests of Jesus time, being proud of having the wisdom of the world. Instead, your essay is pushing me to go back to my Lord Jesus, and just meditate on two simple things, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. Thank you.

Richard Kim wrote in reply>you know Pepe, i was going to write a response pointing out all the ways you have misrepresented Christ but in the end i think Christ himself would want you to know one thing... >>HE loves you and wants you to come to know, HE who is the Christ... then perhaps you too will agree that Jesus Christ has only one true face...>>God bless,>richard


Pepe’s reply
January 20 2005

To Richard Kim:

Please tell me specifically, “what I have misrepresented Christ” in my article?

Secondly, you have said: “ Jesus Christ has only one true face”…which face does your true Jesus have?

The face of a cultist Jewish rabbi that roamed around the hill of Jerusalem with his armed band of twelve disciples and advocated his people to resist the oppressive power of the Roman Empire?
The one with which the Christian Crusaders thousand year ago accompanied committing the massacre of Jews, Muslims, and Infidels?
The one with which Christopher Columbus and later Spanish Franciscan Friars and European Christians brought in the New World where they engaged in genocidal campaign to exterminate the aboriginal natives from the face of the earth?
Or the one that the US Marines had carried with them to the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq?

In the thick history of mankind’s inhumanity, which face of Jesus did those Christians carry in the mind and soul that fueled genocide against Muslims, Africans, Indians, Jews, Gypsies and other religious, racial, and ethnic groups?
What are these Christians who continue such wholesale slaughter still today?
Are they the Christian fascists, the dangerous fanatics who aim to make the US a religious dictatorship and to force this upon the world in the imperial form of the “New Rome”?

I am positive that you would never say all of above descriptions on Jesus is not the face of “your Jesus”, but a loving, caring, and amiable chap who would save us all mortals from sin we inherited from our birth on this wicked world.
As one’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, do you think Jesus could be a universal god to the benefit of everyone’s taste on earth?

As someone said, “You are with us or against us”, couldn’t I be your friend if I do not agree with “your” Jesus Christ?
Who has the final authority to define the one and only and true Jesus Christ? The church, Pope, the Emperor or the President of USA?
Have you noticed that Rev. Sun Myung Moon recites and monopolizes the word “true” with true father, true mother, and true family in every gathering around the world, implying that his god is true one?

Are you convinced that “your” Jesus should be the one for every mortals on earth assume a universal “true Jesus”?
Or where could I find a “true Jesus”? At Church? An Evangelical gathering of Billy Graham? The Christian missionary works at the Infidel world?
Or in my personal and spiritual communion with God?

To Jae MJ Lee

First of all, I refuse to entangle with your ad hominem attack on my article, because I have experienced many times with such pompous replies in other forums that resulted in nasty argument of character assassination.
Instead of engaging in serious debate, many respondents tend to become agitated, annoyed, combative, and abusive in their replies, as you avoided to discuss the core of my article and pre-judged your assumption as an infallible reality.
In the future conversation, I will try not to engage with you in the personal way but in a modality of the public debate.

However, in replying with my “psycho-babble”, you babbled about the Bible, Pharisee, and High Priest in brief.
On the assumption that “I have not read the Bible”, I would like to place some questions to you.
1. Do you believe all the narratives of the Bible an inerrant and infallible word of God?
2. Do you read the Bible in “literal sense”?
3. How do you think of Jesus, a Jewish rabbi or a one of triune Christian Gods?

I appreciate if you give me your high opinion.

Thanks

Pepe Sojourner
January 20 2005

PS. I will be back for a reply with Frank later


Hmm...Pepe, I think there needs to be a more lucid distinction of the term "Christian." Like you have mentioned, many varying groups have different images of Jesus, but in my mind and others on this board who are in concordance with reformed theology, there is only one image of Jesus. He was and is the Son of the Father who came to atone for the sins of those whom were gracefully chosen. In addition, there seems to be a conspicuous political agenda on your part by calling the Bible Belt people “Christian Fundamentalists.” What exactly does this mean? Is this adjective tantamount to abortion clinic bombers or people that believe the literal truth of the bible? Because if it is the former, I am not a fundamentalist. However, if it is the latter, I am proudly a fundamentalist.