By Kim Heung-sook
Freelance Columnist
Being a Korean today is a tough job. Being the eleventh child of a struggling family, you have to pay your dues and get little in return, except the halfhearted concern of your parents. You have to be on your own most of the time whether in delight or in distress.
Your parents have a dozen other children to feed. Young ones like you tend to be focused on their own happiness and problems and don’t understand the millions of things their parents have to cope with, from flood to utility fees, cunning neighbors and bullies near and far.
In your part of the world, developments are agonizingly fast and both you and your parents have a hard time adapting to change.
It is natural that you feel lonely and dispensable in your crowded home. You go through growing pains and want to find empathetic listeners in whom you can confide your dreams and worries. You don’t want to bother your parents who look too busy or unsympathetic to accommodate your troubles.
As Oxford professor Richard Dawkins says in his best-selling ``The God Delusion,” your needs may be better met by non-religious means such as philosophy and science but you, like many softhearted ones, find consolation in religious clubs.
You choose one God and yet, if you stay within the believers’ circle, you are to gradually learn to believe that God has chosen you. Your reason may detect errors in the religious doctrine of your choice, but you don’t raise questions as long as you want to remain in the circle.
As you ripen into adolescence and then adulthood, your religion helps you connect with righteous people, and you feel empowered spiritually and socially.
Some religions are quite aggressive in sharing the good news with outsiders and your religious brothers and sisters volunteer as evangelists. Some spread ``Invitation to Happiness” leaflets on subway trains, while others leave home on similar missions abroad.
Sometimes, religious volunteers make valuable contributions to humanity by undertaking difficult tasks which non-believers seldom do. Some live unmarried as foster parents of needy children.
Some offer their body parts to strangers. Some even go to conflict-ridden far away countries with a fervent wish to aid the suffering people there.
When you plan to embark on such a mission on foreign soil, i.e. Afghanistan, your friends try to dissuade you, noting that the country is governed by a religious credo different from yours. However, you believe and say you will be safe as you will offer medical and educational services and won’t promote your belief.
Finally, you set foot in the destination you longed for. You don’t take precautions but behave as a tourist in a friendly country; heedless of the people who don’t see your innocent desire and think that you are spreading your religious doctrine, or who are so desperate they just make the best of your presence for their benefit.
So, at the most unsuspecting moment, your lives are held captive by a group of people, the same people that you planned to serve. Prayer and delusion of grace sustain you for some time, but as the days in captivity wear on, some of you come to doubt if your God cares at all about your well-being.
Those who read history books may suddenly remember the crusades of bygone centuries. Those who heard John Lennon sing ``Imagine” recall a couple of lines from the song: ``Imagine there’s no heaven … And no religion too …”
Some of you may hold on to the belief that God will save you. Some may silently curse God for putting you in prolonged danger. Some may promise to God that you will serve him better once you are freed.
Through the forcible soul-searching process, some may even realize that God is not responsible for anything, as God is only an image created or inherited amongst human beings.
My earnest hope is to see you Korean hostages in Afghanistan come back home safe. I hope you will come back and make your hard-earned lessons known. I hope you will graduate from your naivety with the help of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.
Most of all, I hope you will be able to recognize the truth that you are saved by the fallible people, not the infallible God, and that you have never been dispensable in your crowded home.
kimsook@hotmail.com
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