Korean East Coast Camp Meeting 2019

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Korean East Coast Camp Meeting

Justin Kim

Identity: From Culture to Christ

Father, we invoke your name as the creator of culture.

So Father, we ask that you continue to give us a sense of humor, to be able to laugh about some of these differences.

And Lord, grant us the keen insight to see through culture and to see the kingdom of heaven and to embody the gospel message.

Father, should any person in this room not be where we should be in our walk with you, we ask that you use this medium and to convict us on all sorts of things.

And even if there's some element in our hearts where we don't want to dwell with you, We ask that you convert us continually and to allow our minds and our hearts to resonate and to sync up with you.

So there is a artist, Chinese artist, who grew up in Germany.

She has a whole art exhibit and she was talking about as a Chinese person she grew up in her teens and she felt that she was Chinese but when she went to Germany she just experienced a whole different world and she's giving this artistic representation on the differences between East and West.

The exhibit is called East Meets West, or West Meets East, whatever, 1 meets the other.

So the blue is the German side, and then the red is the Chinese side.

She writes in Chinese and German, and this is, Liebe ist die Welt, This is what the world view, the life of the Western person is the individual.

Their frame of reference is always inside out.

Me first And then it's not me in terms of like theological me.

It's just the individual is where reality starts from.

Now on the eastern side, reality does not start from the individual.

Now you may be thinking, How is that possible?

The reality always starts from the group and then comes how does the group view me?

And this impacts our spiritual lives, our family, I mean everything, So this is where it starts.

So for example, this is a German camp meeting lunch, yes, and this is a Korean camp meeting lunch, as you see.

Germans in the Western world, they believe in individualism, and so they're an organization, So when you get, when we're distributing something, automatically, without instructions, people get in line.

Why do I have to wait in line when I can just go to the eggs and French toast right and ignore all these people waiting in line, it's more efficient.

Now, this is it's meant to be humorous, but this has missiological ramifications that when there were Western missionaries that went to China and they're giving out rice, all these Chinese came in and it's just like, you know, 단체로 모였어요.

You know, just came in as a group and these Westerners are like, these guys are primitive.

How, what, why don't they learn to get in line?

They're, you know, elbowing each other and getting in and whatnot.

This even happened in Korea, where the first IKEA opened in IKEA.

And I don't know what it is about Koreans and free, but they said, you know when you have the, we Americans don't, Korean Americans don't notice it, But when you go into an IKEA, you have those little survey.

And you have those little golf pencils that are really, really cheap.

And you use the golf pencil to write your survey.

So these Koreans all went to IKEA, not to shop at IKEA, but to get a free pencil.

They don't need to get free pencils, especially the small little golf cheap ones.

So they all came in and they're not waiting in line.

They're all in like just all around this small little plexiglass stand trying to get that free pencil.

It's just in the mentality that, hey, it's more efficient if we all go together than wait in line, but the Western definition of efficiency is everyone get in line and get your stuff 1 at a time.

So it's not 1 is better than the other, but there is a cultural difference between the 2.

Another picture is you see here, this is your version of self, the ik-ai, the version that Westerners see themselves as like the whole world.

The Easterners really don't see themselves as an individual.

This is a form of communication that Westerners, when they say A and they want to get to B, they just explain A to B.

But for Easterners, they have to explain everything else that's going around because they have a holistic way of explaining a certain part of a scenario.

For example, you know, I had this interaction with my parents.

I'm like, hey, I met pastor so-and-so today.

Did he take a plane or did he take a van?

But for him, all these details impact his future interaction with that pastor.

And for him, he needs to know all the information to be up-to-date so that when he has an interaction, he says, oh my son told me you took an airplane at 04:00 and you were with your wife and da da da da.

And then that helps his future interaction with him, whereas for me, I was like, least common denominator information and just straightforward.

Okay, There is a little bit of male-female dynamics here, but there is also a cultural element as well.

So, for example, in a Western context, I am friends with these 2 people, she's friends with those people, friends with blah blah blah.

But in an Eastern context, we're all friends with everybody and there's no like it was just it's connected.

So if 1 person wants to do some kind of social interaction, it affects everybody.

Now this is the basis for a lot of social interactions at Korean church, right?

And so my wife and I go to an American, you know, regular international, you know, non-Korean church and I was like, hey, let's invite so and so and so and so.

Okay, but my wife and the Koreans are like, well, what if this person here, and this is this person's sister, and this person goes to this person's Sabbath school, and we need to invite the whole church over.

How did it go from 2 families to 200 people?

But this is just the way their social interactions work.

This is partying, where in the Western context you just interact with 2 people here and you sip and you go get some food and you interact with 2 other people there and whatnot.

In the Eastern context you have group games.

I'm like, guys, it's now game time, let's get in a circle.

And in automatic, and Korean Americans, it's a funny thing, Even though we're in this paradigm, we like that social interaction.

Or the other way, we're in this paradigm.

Identity: From Culture to Christ

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