Chapter 2 Worldly Wiseman
My childhood was not a time of abundance in our society, and I'm sure we're much better off now than we were then. Nevertheless, I don't feel happy. Maybe it's the pathetic feeling of standing by and watching my neighbors struggle. On my pilgrimage, I meet people who are too proud, and among them are those who, armed with worldly knowledge, tempt me to the path of destruction. Of course, I couldn't have come this far without the help of an evangelist.
When Christian left the city of destruction, there was a man who followed him, and that man was Obstinate and Pliable. Obstinate stopped Christian and asked him why he had left his hometown, to which Christian replied, "I am going in search of an inheritance that is undefiled and unfading in heaven, and I want you to enjoy this unimaginable treasure and be blessed by accompanying me. As long as you remain here, you cannot escape destruction; it is written so in this book I have."
Christian, Obstinate and Pliable(2022)
But Obstinate ultimately rejected Christian's words and returned to the city of destruction, because the field of his heart was on the side of the road in the biblical parable of the sower. His heart was already hardened by his own stubbornness, and he had closed his heart to the word of God. Pliable that accompanied Obstinate overcame Obstinate's recommendation to return to the city of destruction, and he agreed with Christian, declaring, "I will share my fate with Christian," and they set out on the road together. But his companionship was short-lived, as he stumbled into a "swamp of despair" in the middle of a field. He struggled out of the swamp, cried out, "No, is this the happy life you promised me for this pilgrimage?" and turned back the way he came, never looking back. Christian barely made it out of the quagmire, thanks to the help of an evangelist who happened to be passing by at the time. Christian asked the help that had rescued him.
"Sir, I heard that this road leads to the narrow gate from the city of destruction, so why don't you fix this pit on the way?" The helper replied, "This deep quagmire cannot be mended. That is why it is called the Swamp of Discouragement. When sinners realise their hopeless condition, all sorts of fears, doubts, and despair arise in their minds. They all flow into this place and stagnate, so it always remains an unpleasant place."
swamp of despair(2022)
After being lifted out of the morass of discouragement by a helpful hand, Christian met a new person: Worldly-Wiseman. He came up to him and asked, "How come you are travelling with such a heavy burden on your back in such a poor mule, and where are you going?" Christian replied, "I am listening to the evangelist and I am going towards the narrow gate." Worldly-Wiseman pointed to the hill above the village, the Moral Village. Worldly-Wiseman said that he would show him an easy and safe way to lay down his heavy burden, and pointed him to the hilltop village of Morality, where he would find a man of the law, who would help him lighten the heavy load on his shoulders. If he was out and about, he kindly directed him to see his son, Civility.
In fact, Worldly-Wiseman was a compromising figure in a world that refused to acknowledge the ransom work of Jesus Christ and put ethics and social reform ahead of the gospel. He was tempting Christian not to go on such a difficult pilgrimage, but to take a comfortable and easy route. Christian took Worldly-Wiseman's advice and set off in search of that village, but the road to it was steep and the path was very rough. The burden he was carrying began to feel even heavier. What's more, when Christian suddenly saw the flames roaring up the hill, he feared that if he tried to climb up there, he would be consumed by the flames. He began to sweat and tremble with fear. Eventually, Christian began to regret taking the wrong advice from Worldly-Wiseman. Fortunately, he was able to find help who rescued him from his despondency and re-directed him on the path to the narrow gate.
Christian at the entrance to Moral Village (2022)
My Academic Worldly-Wiseman
While attending church, I met two Worldly-Wisemen in my academic world: Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution and Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene. Charles Darwin believed that our ancestors evolved from chimpanzees. He advocates evolution by natural selection. The Bible says that when God created man, he created him in the image of God (Genesis 5:1), and that no one has ever seen God (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12). So if God created humans, why not through the Spirit of God's providence, not evolution?
What was Darwin's idea of natural selection? Darwin used the term artificial selection to describe the different breeds of livestock, for example, the 350 different breeds of dogs. He explained this by saying that humans created the breeds with intention. So who was involved in the diversity of species? Darwin explains the idea of species diversity in this world with the concept of natural selection. To the faithful and spiritual eye, it appears that the variety of creatures on earth must have been created by the invisible One, that is, God.
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Richard Dawkinson explains that even the biblical altruism of 'love thy neighbour' is all done at the behest of selfish genes. He even argues that humans are nothing more than carriers of genes, that there was never a God in the first place, and that it is a 'God Delusion'.
Worldly-Wisemen(2022)
The Bible says that "God is light" (1 John 1:5), and the term light appears 196 times. In modern physics, light is what we call tiny bits of energy (photons). In biology, light is also the source of life, used in photosynthesis. When we say light, these tiny particles are in motion. The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second. Nothing in the world exists faster than that, and if someone were to cut this tiny grain of light traveling 300,000 kilometers a second with a sharp knife, it would instantly turn into a non-existent object. That's what the Bible calls the Spirit of God. So it says in Genesis 1:1-2, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; the earth was chaotic and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters'.
God is not a 'God Delusion', as a worldly-wiseman and zoologist R. Dawkinson put it; rather, God calls the animals I study by numbers, but He calls us humans by our names. The Bible (John 12:6) tells us that God's Son, Jesus, came to earth to tell us in person, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me."
So God has no history and is beyond the concept of time. If there is, there is only the present moment, and even that is gone before we can finish saying 'now is the present'. There is a difficulty that arises when we trap God within the concept of time. Every Christian believes that 'God knows what we're going to do tomorrow', but if God really does know what I'm going to do tomorrow, doesn't that mean I don't have the freedom to act differently? This is a difficulty that arises because we mistake God for a being who is bound by the concept of time like we are - that is, we think that God is different from us in that He knows what's ahead.
If God could foresee our actions, it would be very difficult for us to see that we have freedom of action. But if we think of God as timeless and above time, he can see the day we call 'tomorrow' as 'today'. To God, every day is just "now."
God, who existed as a spirit in the beginning, came to earth in the incarnation of Jesus. And before he was crucified, he says this "If I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come to you. But if I go away, I will send the Holy Spirit to you (John 16:7)," meaning that the Holy Spirit is already in me now, transcending the concept of time, as Jesus, the Messiah.
So 'Jesus was crucified for our sins' is a present continuous tense, not a historical event, and from the moment Jesus said, 'It is finished, and he bowed his head, and his spirit passed away' (John 19:30), our sins were all settled. It takes effect when we believe it as Christians. God is declaring that the finished work of Jesus on the cross is in effect in the future and for all eternity. As you read through the Bible, one passage stands out as a reminder that God is timeless. Peter (2 Peter 3:8) writes, "To God a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day." Clearly, God has no concept of time. Clearly, God has no concept of time and is beyond it. We can see that He is interfering with humans who live in the concept of time only in spirit.
There are miracles in the Bible that are incomprehensible to us humans who live within the concept of time. For example, in the Gospel of John (2:1-10), Jesus goes to a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee and performs the miracle of turning water into wine. If we look at it in terms of time, you have to have grapes and ferment them to make wine. It takes time to grow grapes and it takes time to ferment to make wine, but that's the event of water turning into wine, without the concept of time at all. Because Jesus is God, he performs miracles without the concept of time. Through this event, Jesus is previewing that heaven, the place we go to after our physical death, is a place without this concept of time.
An Evangelist on my pilgrimage
As I walked with these heavy burdens, there was a true evangelist who helped me. He was Elder Kim Yong-ki (1909-1988), the founder of Canaan Farmer's School, whom I met in college. Elder Kim taught me how to live a Christian life of frugality, sweat, and hard work at Canaan Farmer's School in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do.
At that time, Korean society was very bad. It was just after the end of the Korean War, so there was a shortage of living materials and we were receiving aid from the United States. At Canaan Farmer's School, we were taught to put into practice the biblical saying, "If you don't work, don't eat!" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). To conserve resources, we were taught to use toothpaste sparingly, no more than the size of a little finger nail. They ate sweet potatoes for one of their three meals, which is now a snack, but back then it was a staple food. Elder Kim Yong-ki taught us how to live as Christians by working diligently and following the teachings of the Bible to get out of poverty. I think it is his teaching that Korea is living like this now. Right after the May 16 Revolution, Park Chung-hee became the chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, and he came to Canaan Farmer's School himself to receive education, became president, and then led the Saemaul movement for the people. After that, the modernisation of Korea was like the miracle of Jesus, five Breads and two fishes in the Bible.
The miracle of the five Breads and two fishes(2020)
Jesus said, "Let the people sit down." They did, and there were about five thousand people seated. Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were seated; and he did the same with the fish. The people were filled and had twelve barley loaves left over (John 6:10-13).
The people who were present were amazed and thought this could not have happened unless God sent him. "This is surely the prophet. God's prophet has come right here to Galilee!" To the enthusiastic cheers of the assembled people, Jesus, knowing that they wanted to capture him and make him king, fled the scene and went back up the mountain.
This miracle of Jesus is a miracle of filling the stomachs of the poor, but it is also a miracle of the value of the little people and the little things, especially when we live in a time of plenty. Our modernised age loves the big, the many, the big and the complicated. God chooses the little things, the things that are ignored in this harsh and complicated age. It's the five barley loaves and two fish that the little child has, and realises that in the hands of the Lord they are multiplied. God's lavish grace is revealed when we share small gifts with the little ones.
Faith and Deeds
I leave the house to get some lunch. When I leave the house, there is a subway, and at the entrance to the subway there is an old man selling 'Big Issue' magazines. The old men selling 'Big Issue' magazines are all known to be homeless. The magazine costs 7,000 won, and they say that if they sell it, they will have 3,500 won. I decide to save my lunch for something cheap and buy the magazine for them while I am on this pilgrimage.
There's a place I visit every couple of weeks. It's the old man who sells 'Big Issue' magazines at the entrance to the subway station. On this particular day, he wasn't there. Instead, a mother and daughter in black long puffers were selling bundles of gloves and socks. I walked past them at first, but when I returned from a quick postal run, there was a white boxy car parked in the driveway. They had folded up their stall and loaded the gloves and socks into the car because no one was buying. I don't know how they came to be selling gloves and socks, it just occurred to me that my mother had a roadside stand with a name tag, and while that was normal back then, when neither you nor I could afford it, it seemed so unfamiliar to me now.
By the time I decided to run over and offer to pay her to sell me some socks, the mother and daughter were long gone. I felt so guilty that I hadn't lived out what the Lord said about loving your neighbor, and wasn't the Bible always teaching us that faith without Action is not true love: "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?" (James 2:14). Today, I had no choice but to walk this pilgrimage again with heavy steps, unable to hold my head high before God.
