Outpost of grace

By Steven L. Shields

If there is one thing that Korea has an overabundance of, it is churches. An old tourist joke used to be that flying over the city (when Gimpo was the main airport), one imagined it was a cemetery because there were so many red-lighted crosses. Since the new airport opened more than 20 years ago, many travelers have never seen the blanket of crosses that covers the city.

Yet they are there, big and small. Within 100 meters of my church building, there are a dozen others. Right next door is a small church on the third floor of a commercial building. Another is just two buildings down the street in the other direction. At the corner, a huge church stands on the main road and another huge one is just up the hill across the street. Down the opposite alley are at least three more, a couple with decent buildings of their own, others in rented space on an upper floor of a building.

I grew up in the church. For hundreds of years, my European and British ancestors were Christians of one form or another. As a child, attending church was never a conscious decision. Our family attended church. No arguments. Growing up, I never questioned the power and authority of the church over me. My understanding of church was that it was there to enforce the rules. A good church member obeyed the rules and obeyed the church leaders without question.

Not until my early 20s did I entertain other thoughts. I railed against conservatism and obedience-mentality. I reasoned that God had given me a mind of my own, so shouldn't I think about my choices and decisions? Of course, the firm moral foundation I was raised with was always a part of that. The rampant drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. was never a temptation. Neither was alcohol or tobacco. I was, by rights, a good church boy.

My worldview dramatically changed when I came to Korea as a 19-year-old farm boy from the western U.S. I moved out of my rather conservative, rules-based understanding into something that was at once scary and beautiful. What a culture shock? What a shift in understanding? Of course, it didn't take place overnight. In fact, it took several years to gestate, to ferment.

One of my first realizations was that the Bible, while God's Word, is not and never was God's literal words. There is a huge difference between the two phrases, theologically, dogmatically and philosophically. The Bible is the product of human writers, who lived very human lives and struggled with human issues. As they wrote their observations, they were not taking dictation from an outside source. Nor were they writing down how God saw things. Rather, the words in the Bible tell us how those dedicated ancestors so many thousands of years ago understood the world around them and God's connection to that world. Their world is not our world. The Bible has meaning and relevance only as we understand the context of their history and culture and can draw lessons from it to apply contemporaneously.

I know some readers may disagree with my perspective. However, it is not my singular viewpoint but rather a broad-based understanding of the Bible by most scholars and denominations of the church. Those who believe they ought to take the words in the Bible literally are misguided. They aren't even reading the original languages but faulty translations.

After decades of pastoral work, I understand that the church is not called to enforce rules but to help people encounter God's presence and feel God's love. When I look at the divisiveness of Christianity today, I feel that many have missed the point of who and what Jesus was. In his day, many religious people believed in the obedience theology of the past. They saw God as violent and vindictive. Their God punished imperfect people and thus they become imperfect and ungodly in their interactions with one another. Violent retribution prevailed. Remember the story of the woman about to be stoned to death?

The church founded by the apostles after Jesus' death is not indispensable. In fact, it was intended only as a means to an end. Sadly, most of us Christians (of every stripe) have forgotten that principle and have made the "church" an end in itself. We spend a lot of time worrying about the church (the building, the offerings, the worthiness of people). The Jesus I read about in the four gospels, and the New Testament in general, is a pastor who taught that God was merciful, forgiving and loves imperfect people. If we confess we are "sinners," it means nothing more or less than that we are imperfect. We need forgiveness and love, just as those imperfect people around us need the same forgiveness and love. We are striving to be better.

We need to look closer at why we have "church" in the first place. If the church is not loving, forgiving, accepting and tolerant, then it's missed the mark. The church is to be a loving community, an "outpost" of grace. Let's make every church that way.

Rev. Steven L. Shields (slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. He is the president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea. He served as copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect The Korea Times' editorial stance.