What Happens To The Faith Of North Korean Underground Christians When They Come To South Korea?

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Pastor Foley

SUSA-KoreanMrs. Foley and I are honored to enjoy the friendship of a number of North Korean defector Christians and Christian families who were previously underground believers when they lived in North Korea. To a person, they are all extraordinary human beings from whom I have learned–and continue to learn–a great deal about faith and patient endurance and the high cost of discipleship, which they insist is a privilege that is to be joyfully paid.

It is rare for us to publish their stories because Christianity runs in families inside North Korea, and almost all of them have family members still there who would be punished for the defector Christians’ indiscreet speech. Still, they are a great help to us in everything from teaching us North Korean underground Christianity to serving as a sounding board for our projects and curricula to helping us investigate/validate/evaluate the claims made about underground Christians in the media, books, and film, most of which are sadly exaggerated or flat out incorrect. We owe these former underground believers a debt that, happily, continues to mount and that we will never be able to repay.

And yet, it is impossible not to notice the ambivalence with which they live their present lives of faith:

  • All of these different individuals and families are still believers. Engage them in a discussion on the Bible and it is as if they emerge from a deep, persistent fog.
  • Most, though not all, attend church in South Korea. All, however, struggle with their experience of church in South Korea. This is not because of something deeply troubling about South Korean churches. The things they struggle with are some of the things that many Western believers would assume to be very basic and right and normal and attractive about church–things like: pastors telling stories in their sermons; little emphasis on memorization; the church being built around the lives/interest/needs of its members (think “relevance”) rather than around the Bible (which is interesting given that the South Korean church is far more Bible-centric than most evangelical churches in the West). Still they would never criticize their church openly. Fascinatingly, they just end up viewing their church involvement as tangential to their faith life and development.
  • Most are wistful, bordering on nostalgic, for the struggles they faced as underground believers. They light up when they talk about the pain they had to endure. They often speak about these experiences as if they are as fascinated by them as we are.
  • And here’s the hardest thing to write: In their present walk of faith (and I think they would all agree with this characterization), they are less zealous in their actions than they were during their time inside North Korea. From a “hear the word” standpoint, they still clearly love the Bible and are as evangelical/orthodox/theologically straight-arrowed as ever. But when it comes to putting their faith in practice, it is as if in many ways they are retired, on furlough, distracted… Most of them would be easily describable as workaholics at their present jobs in South Korea. Their default conversations are much like ours. When we ask how they are doing they talk about aches and pains and illnesses they or their family members in South Korea are facing (most North Korean defectors have pretty significant residual health problems even after having been in South Korea for a while). They talk about their kids, they talk about school, they talk about work. I would not describe them as naively materialistic, but I would describe them in the same way I describe most of us Western and South Korean Christians: Pragmatically materialistic–our agenda set by the world and by work and by our kids, with God as an ever-present help to get us through another day. Still actively hearing the word (through Bible study, prayer, family devotions, and church attendance) but not so actively doing it. A bit like retired superheroes, with a little bit of a paunch and gracefully graying hair, always happy to reminisce longingly about past capers but no longer entertaining thoughts about putting on the cape again.

I’ve wondered over the years whether this was just a phase, and a very understandable one. After all, these are refugees with all that entails. Who can go full tilt for God while trying to learn how to operate an elevator, peel a banana, and get a job?

But what I’ve observed as time has passed is that former underground Christians are more adept than many North Korean defectors at achieving material success in South Korean society. They save money well. They stay at one job instead of hopping around. In short, they think about the future and not just the present. And as they achieve that success, I note that they become just as attached to it as we Western and South Korean evangelical Christians do to our own success. They don’t become raging materialists. But they do become surprisingly recognizable Christians of the type that South Korean and Western societies produce, ones that have made their peace in the world even as they continue to know that they are not of the world.

In other words, over time they come to look a lot like you and me.

Now none of this causes me to despair. I am incurably optimistic and so I keep their superhero costumes dry cleaned and phone booths ready for them to charge into. I regularly shine the bat signal into the sky outside their windows and drop not-so-subtle hints that Mrs. F and I are going out crime fighting and there’s a seat available in the batmobile.

But all of this does shape my thinking on what I believe to be some important issues that we as Christians all to rarely discuss:

  • I think it is not quite accurate to say that persecuted Christians are amazing. I think it is more accurate to say that the Holy Spirit is amazing and that God draws especially close to those willing to suffer for his name.
  • I think “the good life” is far more corrosive to the spirit than any of us have really yet fully grasped.
  • I think Paul was not being modest but rather incredibly insightful about human nature when in Philippians 3:10-14 he wrote,

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

“Called heavenward”–it’s worth us (and them) thinking about what that means.

Posted in Bible, Making Disciples, North Korea, persecution, Reigning, Works of Mercy | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

North Korean Underground University Students Learn Why Rest Is An Act Of Faith

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Pastor Foley

The first of 54 Bible stories that the Foleys are teaching the North Korean Underground University students is the Creation account from Genesis 1:1 – Genesis 2:25.  Pastor and Mrs. Foley focus on what God did on the seventh day–rest–and how our imitation of that rest is an important aspect of our faith…especially for ministry leaders.

To watch our other North Korea videos visit our Seoul USA Video Page.

Posted in North Korea, Videos | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Seeing Other People With The Eyes of Christ

Posted on March 5, 2014 by tdillmuth

WLO_sharingbreadAdmittedly, there are some pitfalls to avoid when “doing the word.”  For example, it’s important that we don’t think we are somehow earning our salvation or keeping it by doing works. We can also wrongly attribute our spiritual growth to our work instead of to God’s grace at work within us.  Yet another danger is the “doing of the word” without properly hearing and understanding God’s word first.  Churches that focus on doing good works in the community sometimes owe more to society’s definition of good than to scripture’s own.

But even with those dangers I still hold firm to what I wrote last week, that the key to discipleship is the combination of “hearing and doing the word.”  But what can keep us from the traps I mentioned above?

As the restricted church leaders (from our training) were getting ready to go out on the streets of Seoul, South Korea to “do the word,” Pastor Foley taught that the prerequisite to doing good is seeing others around you with the eyes of Christ.

By default we often see others with our own sinful eyes.  We see others as obstacles to what we want to do.  We see others as objects of our own lust.  We see others as stepping stones to our own success or self-image improvement.  A lot of the time we don’t see others at all, even when we bump into them.

But what if we began to see others with the eyes of Christ?

What would you see when you looked into the eyes of the homeless man that begs on your street corner?  What would you see when you went through the grocery line of the frazzled cashier?  What would you see when talking to a demanding teacher from your child’s school?  What would you see if you looked at your enemy through these eyes?

Our challenge is that we must be willing to see that God is present with each and every person that we meet.  And each situation we encounter is  calling to mirror God’s goodness to that person.

It was fascinating to hear the testimonies of how these restricted church leaders saw others with the eyes of Christ when they hit the streets.  For example, one church leader came across an elderly Korean lady unloading a truck full of heavy cement bricks.  This leader initially said the woman looked more like an opportunity to fulfill the homework assignment we had given to him, but when he helped her unload the bricks he encountered her as a real person with needs, hopes, and challenges. He realized that people are not means to the end of doing good but are ends in themselves. That’s how God sees people, too.

Other conference participants, shared their bread (literally) with a homeless man that they had probably walked by several times on the way to and from the week’s training events. They had some bread that they had bought from a bakery earlier that morning and they ate together while also sharing about Christ. The homeless person ceased being a fixture and became a meal companion.

We won’t really know if any of these actions caused change for the elderly lady or the homeless man, but we do know the change that God began to do in these church leaders themselves.  One participant repented before the Lord for not noticing the need for God’s goodness all around her before.   Another participant realized that “seeing others through Christ’s eyes”  was something he needed to do on a daily basis and not just during a conference.  And finally, one participant said that she experienced the joy of the Lord more fully through seeing others with the eyes of Christ.

Ultimately, when we “do the word,” we don’t do it like a homework assignment or a chore or as an act of self- (or other-) improvement.  We do it because through Christ God has given us new eyes to see the world and we are simply being true to that new vision.

Posted in Sharing Your Bread | Tagged , , | 1 Comment