Posted on 11/17/2006 9:32:22 PM PST by Louis Foxwell
(I have been wanting to express this for some time. A comment on another thread prompted me to put it in words.)
South Korea has some of the largest Christian churches in the world. They send missionaries to every nation including our own. They are, by all appearances, a great Christian nation, but their Christianity is a lie.
The most basic Christian impulse is to care for one's neighbor and to love one's brothers and sisters. South Korea is absolutely paranoid about a sudden influx of North Koreans into their society. They are not willing to threaten the comfort and wealth they have developed for the sake of desperately poor cousins to the north. This is NOT a Christian response. It is selfish and profoundly immoral.
South Koreans will lose their precious comforts because they are not willing to share them. Greed is their byword and poverty will be their reward. They will reap the whirlwind of their failure to be genuine Christians.
Some of us have a problem with this thing called "false witness."
By the way, nothing is stopping you from stepping away from your keyboard, moving to South Korea or China near the NK border, getting a job teaching English, and then working surrepticiously to smuggle freedom tracts and Bibles into NK and spirit people out. Should be pretty easy, right?
But maybe you can do more good staying glued to your keyboard telling others what to do.
Oh, and if you do that, you might be shocked - shocked! - to find there are many already doing that, some having already quietly given their lives in the process.
God went so far as to wipe out whole cities with fire who didn't follow Him and instructed His own people to wipe out whole races of people. He even tells the whole world that if we do not follow Him, He will send us to Hell!
You speak to me about the "horror of allowing people to die under malicious dictatorship." What of the entire example of God and Christ under the very contexts of which you speak? You are 180 degrees out of phase with the Bible.
I do not (and am not allowed to) excuse anyone's moral failings. However, I can identify what is a moral failing and for whom is actually at fault, unlike you in your words to date.
I am not responsible for your sins before God. Likewise, South Korea's people are not responsible for the sins of North Korea's people or government.
Death will happen, regardless of what you profess Sought Korea should be doing.
You seem to believe it is more important before God to some attempt to stop death than to convert people who are able to hear the Word, to God.
God allows millions to die around the world every week. Should we do any and everything to help someone survive a bit longer? The answer is a simple, "No". It was placed before us as the example of Christ and God throughout all of time. He did not make everyone survive in a similar light.
If you have a problem with my words, you must truly have a problem with God.
Life is less important than being with Him. Not all will be with Him, unfortunately.
God did not compromise with those cultures he eradicated. Neither should we. Instead, we need to offer an example and be willing to be there under circumstances in which our belief is not compromised. What don't you understand about that?
Since YOU know so much about the need of the North Koreans and YOU have the burden for them YOU should go over there and smuggle food in.
On multiple occasions during the Clinton regieme, N Korea was brought back from the brink of annihilation from starvation by US charity. N Korea has never been thankful, but instead has been busy building nuclear weaponry. IMHO, God might be performing his own methods of discipline on N Korea and our interference might only entice our own destruction.
Individual believers who seek Him are not denied grace and charity, but those who meddle between God and enemies of His plan are foolish.
Your arguments are not different in any respect from those of Muslim fanatics. Your God, sir, is my satan.
By the way, nothing is stopping you from stepping away from your keyboard, moving to South Korea or China near the NK border, getting a job teaching English, and then working surrepticiously to smuggle freedom tracts and Bibles into NK and spirit people out. Should be pretty easy, right?
I guess the same thing that is convincing you that South Korean lives aren't being put on the line for oppressed people. Absolutely nothing!
Well, Amos, we've finally shown your God is apparently Satan.
You cast aspersions on an entire country with nothing to back it up, nor any Scriptural response to validate what you think ought to be done in such circumstances as per what God has shown us in the Bible.
I don't know about you, CM, but I've had about enough of this guy.
You want facts. Try some of this:
The National Security Law makes it a crime to express sympathies with North Korea, and though it is not consistently enforced there are over 100 people jailed under it annually. A play about the Yodok prison camp in North Korea has come under significant pressure from authorities to tone down its criticism and the producers have been threatened with prosecution under the security law.[1] Some conservative groups have complained that police keep a tight watch on their demonstrations and that some people were prevented from attending rallies.[2] Former Unification Minister Chung Dong-young was once accused of attempting to distract reporters from a meeting of activists for human rights in North Korea.
The government blocks access to North Korean websites and, sometimes, to major overseas web sites that host blogs. When South Korean citizen Kim Sun-il was held hostage and beheaded in Iraq, the government moved to block access to websites with the video of his execution. South Korea is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world, and it is very difficult for outsiders to be fully accepted. Legal protections for the rights of minority populations are often weak. The large population of workers from Southeast Asia, over half of whom are estimated to be in the country illegally, face considerable discrimination both in and out of the workplace.
Mixed-race Korean children also face pervasive discrimination, so much so that a large number of them attempt suicide and it is rare for them even to finish high school; many are simply given up for adoption. When Hines Ward, who is of mixed Korean and African American heritage, earned MVP honors in Super Bowl XL, it sparked a debate in Korean society about the treatment mixed children receive[2].
[edit] Refugees from North Korea
Many refugees from North Korea have complained that they find integration into South Korean society to be difficult; they say they often face social ostracism and a government that would rather they keep quiet about the human rights situation in the North.[5][6][7]. The government makes everything possible to minimize the impact the refugees might hve on its policy towards the North. An internet radio station operated by refugees, broadcasting for those living in the North, was subject to a campaign of harassment that ended in it being unable to afford its rent after less than one month of operation. The station accused the government of either being behind the campaign or tacitly encouraging it.[10][11] The government also blocked activists from sending radios to the North, and a scuffle reportedly left activist Norbert Vollertsen injured.[12] At the same time, the South Korean human rights' groups, being traditionally leftist, tend to ignore the plight of the North Korean refugees who are often misrepresented as "liars" or "loosers" by the leftist media outlets, still somewhat supportive of Stalinist dictatorship in North Korea.
ping to some little know facts here in the US at post 52.
FYI
As a person coming from an evil empire myself [albeit from a bit milder version of it - USSR] I find your position indefensible, repugnant and morally defecative. Until and unless NK'ers transcivilize, they should be treated worse than they currently are in South Korea.
"...indefensible, repugnant and morally defecative."
Yep.
Amos, how on earth does any of that make them sinners in the eyes of God?
We do know that South Korea has a highly militarized enemy that tried to wipe it out to its north. Many have family members who they would dearly love to have come across the border to be with them, but all North Korea has generally allowed is to let a very few of them drive into North Korea and spend a few minutes with them. Otherwise, North Koreans are basically kept in North Korea.
South Korea, just this week, is yet again seeking to appease the North Koreans, this time by going against President Bush's request for inspections of North Korea. Remember, North Korea was not to have created any nuclear bombs to date, but they have been proven very untrustworthy.
If we were talking about Christian brothers and sisters in Christian-based countries, you would have more to stand on. However, do you even realize that Jesus demands we DO NOT FORGIVE THE BROTHER WHO OFFENDED US UNTIL TRUE REPENTANCE OCCURS? OTHERWISE WE ARE TO REBUKE THE BROTHER UNTIL HE REPENTS!
You are way off base here, Amos. Please open your Bible and spend some time reading it.
I am with you up to the offended part. How have the slaves in North Korea offended anyone? It seems to me that they have been sinned against. My concern is for people who are oppressed to the point of death. How is this their fault? The government of South Korea is so steeped in liberal dogma that it does not allow the people of its own nation to reach out to help their own people to the North. Token gestures are no solution to the crisis that engulfs these desperate people.
Your opinion that the Bible teaches salvation to the exclusion of caring for the poor and broken is not consistent with Christian ethics as taught by Jesus.
When I said that your comments do not differ from those of Muslim fanatics I meant just that. Their attitude is Muslim or death. You seem to be saying the same.
The oppression of North Korea is an infamous evil. The unwillingness of the South Korean government to assimilate escapees from that tyranny is unacceptable.
Why, do you suppose, is the South Korean government so bitterly opposed to Bush's doctrine? It is because they refuse to accept responsibility for the desperate people of North Korea. They take the position that the North is a benevolent Marxist state that should remain forever divided from the South. They refuse to acknowledge the murdurous humanitarian crisis in the North.
All of this is dictated by a media and a bureaucracy guided by the humanistic liberal philosophy of moral equivalency. This should be anathema to the Christian in the South.
Just as is the case here in the US, Christians in South Korea are silent in the face of the moral darkness of their government and its elites.
There is great wisdom in what you say here, Amos. [Please forgive my tiny edits.] Let them who have the ears to hear the word of God understand your testimony, and through them, others as well.
May God ever bless you.
Like, duh -- the border is militarized! North Koreans CAN'T get into the south.
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