The Contemplative Prayer

The contemplative prayer
February 28, 2006

In his lecture at the Gillbott Church, 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.

Pepe Sojourner

Paik Sanghoon replied
March 2, 2006

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.


Pepe replied with the following disputation:
March 3 2006

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.

Paik replied
March 4, 2006

I am with you that speaking-in-tongues may go to the extreme of fanaticism which sometimes results in some sort of destructive, unreasonable behaviors. This is often observed, as you pointed out, in the circles of the excessive charismatic movement. In this case, glossolalia may only be an effort on the part of the person praying made to speak what is inside out. That type of glossolalia cannot be construed as a true communication with God and as such a form of contemplation.

What I have seen, however, is that there are some who are speaking in tongues in a very quite mood. Kneeling down or sitting on the floor they are murmuring or whispering in a small voice. Their voice, then, is only a means through which they reach out toward God. Some of them show very humble characters with profound insights into spiritual things. Hence, what I want to argue is that glossolalia is more variously practiced than some people normally assume, and that it can be, if rightly practiced, a way of contemplation in that it goes beyond human words.

The Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence

s아래글은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 제목하의
모 기독 토론사이트 의 글에 대한 반론입니다.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

역사적 근거는 사실의 증명에 쐐기를 박는 역할을 합니다.
그러나 모든 사실에 역사적 근거가 100% 존재하는건 아닙니다.
한단계 더 나아가 우리는 100% 역사적 근거가 없더라도 간접적인 증거들를 통해 믿을수도 있읍니다.
제가 어릴적 개인적으로 목격한, 한 청년이 5명을 제압하는, 역사적(?) 사건은 신문이나 역사책에는 기록되지 않았지만 엄연한 사실이란는건 제가 누구보다도 더 잘 압니다. 또한 제말을 통해 그사건을 알게된 몆몆 친구들도 조금은 과장이 (예를 들면 주인공은 상처 하나 안나고 한방에들 5명을 다 눕혔다 등) 있을수도 있을것이라고 생각은 하겠지만 지금도 그 사건 자체는 의심치 않고 믿고 있읍니다. 그리고 그사건은 사실입니다.
님께서는 말씀하시기를 아담과 하와, 카인과 아벨, 노아와 그 세 아들, 아브라함과 이삭 야곱등 아브라함의 자식들, 롯, 여호수와, 모세, 사울, 다윗 솔로몬, 삼손, 이사야, 엘리야, 다니엘등등에 대한 역사적 근거가 단 한줄도 없다고 하셨는데 성경 이외의 일반 고문서에서 위에 열거한 인물에 대한 직접 간접 reference 는 꽤 있는 편입니다. (시간을 줄이기 위해 또 형식적인 cut/paste는 삼가기 위해 reference 링크들은 생략합니다)
한걸음 더 나아가 신약에서는 예수를 비롯하여 많은 저자들이 구약의 인물에 대한 직접적인 인용을 하고 있읍니다.
만일 예수를 포함한 이들이 구약의 거짓기록을 바탕으로 신약의 역사를 이어갔다면, 이처럼 허수아비 신앙이요 종교는 없을것이며 모래성 같은 결과가 나왔을법도 합니다.
우리가 모든 역사적 사건에 대한 명백한 증거와 사실적 근거를 요구하는것은 옳바른 자세이며 또한 지극히 당연한 태도 이겠지만 눈에보이는 (tangible) 증거가 없다고 하여 실제적 사실일수도 있는 사건들을 증거 불충분으로
부정적 결론 지을수 만도 없습니다.
우리가 잘 알고 믿고 존경하는 이순신장군도 그가 태어난것을 본 사람은 없으되 그 역사적 사실을 의심치 않음은
그에 대한 기록이 남아있기 때문인데, 그 기록한 저자들이 허구인물을 만들어내어 오늘날까지 우리들을 기만하고 있다고 공박하지 않음은 저자들및 기록에 대한 integrity 와 그 인물로부터 파국된 일련의 흔적들에 대한 beyond the reasonable doubt 에 입각한 신빙성 때문이 아니겠습니까.
고로 위에 열거한 인물들을 기록한 성경도 바로 이러한 standard 의 눈으로 보았을때 더 나으면 나았지 결코
열약한것은 아닙니다. 물론 이 모든것이 직접적으로 사실을 증명하는것은 아닙니다. 그러나 어느정도 지식수준을 가진 사람이라면 충분히 결론을 낼수 있는 정황입니다. 우리는 어디까지 직접적인 증거를 제시하여야만 이순신장군에 대한 기록을 1%의 의심도 없이 믿게 되는것입니까. 여기에, 성경은 당연히 영적인 요소도 있기에 개인적인 <믿음> 에 따라 결론이 쉽게 도달할수도 있는건 당연합니다. 제가 말씀 드리고자 하는것은 성경에 기록된 사실들을 볼때 지극히 closed 된 종교집단의 기록이라고만 보기 이전에 우리가 일반 역사책을 대할때의 기준과 같은 눈으로 판단해야 하는것이 합리적이요 객관적인 독자들의 태도라고 생각하는 것입니다. 허구를 사실로 기록했다면 아무리 고도의 치밀성을 가진 종교집단의 fraud 도 모든 사람의 진실의 눈을 속일수는 없는게 .. 역사에서 배우는 사실이 아닙니까.
고로 결론은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 말에 "역사의 정의 가 무엇인가" 라는 말로
여운을 남긴채 소견을 맺을까 합니다.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?
December 29, 2005

It appears that Steve sounds like one of card-carrying born-again/evangelical Christians in the US (40 percent in the Gallup Poll in 2001), who cut his teeth on evangelicalism at the mega-church.
The term “evangelicalism” originated in the Greek word evangelion, meaning “the good news” or more commonly “the “gospel”, and later Martin Luther during the Reformation adapted the term as his breakaway movement “evangelical church”.

A British historian, as we entered the 21st Century, described briefly the specific hallmarks of evangelical religion as follows: 1. Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be changed. 2. Activism: the expression of the gospel in effort. 3. Biblicism: a particular regard for the Bible. 4. Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Steve here focused on the historical veracity of the Old Testament: Biblicism.

Steve argued in a nutshell that we should read the narratives of the Bible as comparable as if we read, understand, and validate the events of the secular history, even though the tangible evidence is hardly come by in the ancient history as if “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence;”

In short, Steve wants us to read the Bible in historical perspective…therefore, he advised us that all the narratives in the Bible were warranted to being occurred in the practical events in human world history…that is, Creation legend, Jesus walking on water, virgin birth, et al occurred historically in the ancient Palestine as if George W Bush today lied to lead Americans to the Iraq War in 2004.
I wonder loud how Steve reconciles with all the horrible stories in the OT of debauchery, massacre, rape, infanticide, incest, and violence sanctioned by Yahweh, the father of Jesus?

Did it occur really and was it accepted by God?

To prove his argument, he raised two episodes: first, he talks about his personal experience that most of people hardly believe about the scuffle, in which he witnessed a superman reducing five men to pulp without any scratch to him…To Steve, the scuffle occurred with 100 % accuracy even it did not enter the historical record.

Secondly, he brought out the saga of Admiral Lee Soon Shin, a legendary hero during the “Im-Jin-Wae-Ran”, whose identity was recorded in the historical book…To Steve and most of Koreans, it is the historical fact “beyond the reasonable doubt’ that Admiral Lee existed and fought against Japanese invading forces.

In the first case of his personal experience, I agree with him that the scuffle really occurred in front of him, but when I talk about the scuffle to Mr. A, the scuffle becomes a hearsay…and it all becomes the hearsay when A talks to B, B to C, or C to D.
In other words, Steve can live in his personified world of events without any prejudice, but he cannot argue that others should live by the same world of his stories, whether it is spiritual or historical because the story is only true to him but others.

Again, the Admiral Lee’s story is surely authentic for Koreans, but there were allegations by the scholars that he exists only in the Korean folklore because there was not an iota of historical residues of his famous and erstwhile turtle ship.
In other words, for Steve and most of Koreans, Admiral Lee existed in history “beyond the reasonable doubt”, but for others who doubt the authenticity of the turtle ship, could also raise the issues of historical authenticities about Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Iusa (Jesus), Musa (Moses), Saul, David, Samson, Isaiah, Elijah, Daniel, et al.

In order to counter his argument, we should look at the question of how the Bible came into being…specifically in the historical perspective as our Steve wishes.

The word “bible” is from the Greek word biblia, the plural of biblion, “a little book”, and it is an anthology that was canonized over several centuries by the institutional church and state after a collection of disparate manuscripts was composed, edited, copied and translated by multiple human hands.
In other words, the narratives of the Bible are NOT a record of the human history or the news stories that we read in our history class at school or hear in radio or TV at the dinnertime every evening.

In addition, we should not forget to understand that the Bible was written solely for the audience in the early centuries who thought the earth is flat and you fly into heaven when you die, and the KJV, one of the Bibles (there are many Bibles unbeknownst to most Christians) was translated, compiled, and redacted for the society where people believed that a unicorn, one-eyed and horned horse, really exists.
Obviously, we, the 21st Century people, were not the “target audience”, when the ancient authors introduced their knowledge into the narratives of miracles, myths, and other phenomena in their social, cultural, and political ambiences specifically.

Most importantly, the Bible was canonized by the bishops, archbishops, and Roman Emperor, who decided which book is palatable or heretical ideas to them; in this canonization process, many books were discarded, destroyed or burned to ashes
Again, the narratives of the Bible were arbitrarily selected according to the pleasures and whims of bishops and Emperor, and others like the Gospel of Thomas or Q were ordered to be destroyed by the church.

Since Thomas’s Gospel ignores the virgin birth, miracles, or the Trinity, it became a non-entity in the collection of the Bible.
Thomas’ was not palatable to the institutional church because its narratives butt head with John’s Gospel (incidentally, John’s was least historical among the canonized Gospels)…in John’s, Jesus is a divine savior who could forgive sins and promise the eternal life, while Thomas’ Jesus is a wandering mystic who was harsh on the rich and called for voluntary poverty.
In other words, John’s was more attractive to the society of early Christians than Thomas’s, so that the church and state selected John’s Gospel and destroyed the Thomas’s.
And we, 21st Century men, were forced to accept and blindly follow the ideas of early Christian bishops and emperor as the words of God and the wisdom of daily life.

Probably now, we, “ the Joe Blows who have an average level of knowledge” as our Steve indicated, may be able to come to the conclusion how we read the narratives of the Bible: should we read it literally and historically as a record of history or metaphorically and allegorically as a collection of the ancient episodes.
Centuries of blissful ignorance about the Bible went by due to our pastors, priests, and bishops who “cherry-pick” the narratives of the Bible and hide the absurdity from their pews of multiple errors, contradiction, debaucheries, massacres, and violence in it.

I think the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two separate things…you can have the latter, mystic Christ, without the former, the earthly Jesus, likewise as millions of people become Christian when they were baptized being held helplessly in their parent’s arms or brainwashed and implanted in a sea of academic, social, cultural and political ambience that sanctions and promotes both the history and the faith of Jesus Christ are one and same.

Doubt is a great weapon for the emphatic seeker of truth.
You don’t have to toe the line with the traditional, popular, orthodox, and official version of the truth all the time, since there is no absolute truth in human society where truth evolves according to the wavelength of human knowledge.
Carl Sagan, the late physicist said: if the ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven is real, he must still be traveling in the millions of light-years in the space.
You can be either a doubter, living a life as an incessant truth-seeker who unlearns the conventional wisdom or a ditto head institutional Christian who lives, eats, procreates, prays, wishes, and the next day you are gone and never seen again.
Be alert!

P.S. (In John’s Gospel, “Doubting” Thomas doubted Jesus’ resurrection until he saw the scar on Jesus’ hands, and Thomas claims to be Jesus’ twin as Thomas is Aramaic word for twin. It is a question that this Thomas is the same Judas Thomas, whom Mark and Matthew mention as the brother of Jesus or the author of the Gospel of Thomas.)