Islam

Do you know what is better than charity and fasting and prayer?

It is keeping peace and good relations between people,

as quarrels and bad feelings destroy mankind.

- Prophet Mohammed

5/11/10

Day 11

Koreans are funny people. They're so sure they know what's right. I mean, they are sure of it. But one doesn't have to dig to deep to discover the true depth of that knowledge. I'm not much better, but I have had some advantages. For one, my mother tongue happens to be the dominant world language and when it comes to non-Korean issues, English is much more informational than Korean is. Some estimates put the number of English speakers at 2 billion. There are only 80 million Korean speakers out there. English wins. 


This morning I had a conversation in English with an older Korean gentlemen about religion. He did what most Korean English speakers do when discussing faith and asked a typically uninformed question.
"Were you raised Catholic or Christian?" he asked.
"Catholic is Christian."
"Yeah, they believe in Jesus, but they're not Christian."
"Are you kidding me? Define "Christian" for me."
I don't think I have to continue with that one, but you get the point. This fellow was certain that Catholics were somehow divorced from Christianity; something that I never even considered being possible. To my surprise, a simple Google search proved that those "informed" English speakers are just as clueless. 


How have people become so ill-informed about these things? Is this an old Protestant trick that I'm not aware of?
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3 comments:

  1. UnknownMay 13, 2010 at 2:39 PM

    After reading one of your past entries on this topic, I asked some of the students up here on the 10th floor about it. No one really knew what to say, but one woman spoke up and said it's just a differentiation between the "old" and "new" church.

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  2. GeorgeMay 14, 2010 at 8:34 PM

    I've been digging a lot lately as well and what I'm hearing mirrors what you heard: Catholicism is old-fashioned Christianity and Protestants are the perfected Christians.

    It makes sense for Korea --a nation that's obsessed with group membership and loyalty-- but what about the US?

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  3. T.K. (Ask a Korean!)May 17, 2010 at 8:27 AM

    Doesn't it make sense to leave "Koreans" out of this?

    ReplyDelete

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