Response to "What should society do for “uncivilized cultures” like the Sawi?"

Response to the question, "What should society do for “uncivilized cultures” like the Sawi?" As a Christian myself, I might personally answer to the question from a Christian mission in mind. Bearing in mind, however, that society includes people other than Christians, and writing under an impression or guess of what the generally socially accepted terms are, I would respond as the following:

One thing I think society should not do is to exploit the people living by primeval practices. Determining what exploitation is may be a topic on which another thread of discussion can take place, but to give somewhat a rough definition for this post, I would say that the kind of exploitation that should not take place is taking away viable means of living. That may concern the indigenous land ownership, employment of native people into newly coming industries, etc. From that it transits, that society should allow a fair treatment that allows a viable living option – not only for the current generation but also for the next. That might concern education that prepares the people to live with (and , ideally, not be exploited by) incoming people from a modernized world. One might question, should societies even interact with these people? Or should they just leave them alone? That may be subject to another discussion (I would, as Christian, lean towards yes, interaction is necessary, but for the sake of evangelism and missions more importantly than material developments), but assuming that interactions will take place one way or another eventually fair treatment by the modernized societies (or ensuring the fair treatment and prohibiting exploitation), I think, is necessary.

Also, should there be ethical practices of the modernized societies that the cultures unexposed to modernization don't have (that is, if there are unethical practices, such as purposeful treacherous cannibalism as that the Sawi used to have and headhunting, which I believe are unethical), then the modernized society or people from it likely would have to make efforts to make changes in that regard. Not to equate modernized with ethical, as the modernized part of the world can still have its load of immorality, but as those who can observe something wrong in the customs that the people who practice them don't realize, the people of the the more modernized world should try to promote the ethical practices (that is not to say that practices of indigenous people all are totally unethical; I mean what I wrote about promoting ethical practices in the aspects where the groups that are not yet modernized have an unethical custom).

Having said that, with my belief that what is right and wrong needs to be measured by what God tells humanity and ethics are tied back to God, I think I would, to go back into the more personal thought on approaching the matter as a Christian, keep in mind Christian evangelism and missions even in the promotion of ethics. So that's where I am.

Response to "What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?"

Response to "What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?".


When we encounter a different culture, the general rule, I think, is to be gentle, patient, humble, and discerning.


Gentle so that we don't act brashly and prevent needless actions that will be interpretted in a seriously different way by those of the other culture; patient so that we give enough time to understand what the other cultures' certain expressions actually mean rather than interpret them through the lens of our culture and mininterpret the intended meaning; humble so that we acknowledge the possibility of imperfections of our culture and be ready to learn from the other cultures, and also so that we realize that our culture is not necessarily supreme and thus not impose all of our culture as if it the entire culture was universally dogmatically perfect; and discerning to truly separate good from bad -- in the other cultures as well as in our own.


I said "thus not impose all of our culture as if it the entire culture was universally dogmatically perfect" in the third point because I believe that certain cultures can have parts that hold values universally applicable, thus the values being something that needs to be universally accepted. Or, even if the value is not dogmatically universal, it could be something that is generally better to adopt than keeping certain traditions instead of adopting that - but we should discern which of them are something that should be adopted, and shouldn't be presumptuous and say that everything of our culture is good by virtue of the fact that it's part of our culture. A change in culture at the expenses of certain long-held unique traditions because of the adoption being better than clinging to certain customs apply for both one's own culture and the others' culture, so discernment is not for the sake of defending one ethnic group's traditions over the other in a partisan manner but to promote what's good, whatever the underlying culture may be. And, as good does not demand uniformity in every aspect diversity alone does not mean that the others are in the wrong (and, conversely, uniformity alone does not mean everyone's right). Anyhow, I don't think "I'm right because I'm me and you're wrong because you're not me" attitude is very commendable when talking about cultures.

Response to "How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?"

The bolded text until the line and a label, "initial posting," is an update as of 29th of December 2010. I felt that the topic of my previous post needed to be addressed again. I didn't edit the previous text but rather I just update my newer viewpoint here. So what I had previously said, it is available below this bolded section.

As a disclaimer, I would like to say that this update was not written after a close re-examination of what I wrote previously, and thus this update and the initial posting may not harmonize very well. I might contradict what I said in the initial posting, whether or not I intended them, and whether they are caused from a real change of view or just an inadequate use of language. My way of phrasing and wording things may belie whatever constancy or change in my view (by "change in my view," I am not only referring to the potential inability to express that my view had changed but also to effectively express to what my view had changed into). I guess I should say that I didn't make this a very well revised essay and thus not give an impression that it is.

I also confess that I may have been arrogant in the way I wrote my previous post and apologize for my shortcoming should it have been so.

And now I begin the actual re-response to the question: "How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?"

In the previous post I have defined "faith" as "as belief and trust in something for which one can doubt about (and therefore has no absolutely cogent proofs for it -- for if there were, then the person wouldn't be able to doubt the matter)."

I realize that some may disagree with defining the term in a manner that allows it to apply to even the secular realm, such as trust in the chair to hold my weight based on past experiences while I can, if I tried, doubt my memories. For readers who did not read the initial posting, the point I was trying to make was that the human mind is capable, or limited enough to always doubt even the things we take as very obvious (I don't want to hammer out in this post which point is more accurate between describing the mind as capable of doubting or limited enough to not grasp with absolute certainty; either way, I think we can still doubt, and that's what I'd like to consider in this post). I do not intend to question our memories beyond reasonable bounds to the extent that everyday living is immobilized by doubt. Anyhow, as I already said, I realized that some may disagree with my definition of "faith" in this manner.

I'm not exactly sure how to define the reason for doing so, but I will, in this update, approach the answer a little differently. I will approach with the definition of Faith as "belief in the supernatural" and then more specifically "belief in the Christian God and Christianity's other beliefs". Then I will mention why I think the possibility to doubt alone discredits the belief in the supernatural.

First, the belief in the supernatural (first definition of Faith) relates to the world in which we live by affecting how people perceive and interpret things, think, feel, and act, which may be kind of obvious. The results depend upon what the belief says. The belief that, for example, when twins are born only one of the babies is a real human child and the other an ill-willed spirit imitating the child's form may cause to killing one of the babies. The belief that twins are the work of God, each with soul and spirit and equally human as the parents, that have been entrusted to the parents will, on the other hand, lead the parents to care and nurture for both babies. Having said that, I would go more precisely into responding with the second definition of Faith, the belief in the Christian God and Christianity's other beliefs.

There could be a number of ways to respond, but I would respond in the way of viewing how Faith is relevant to the world in the Christian perspective (unlike observing how the Christian Faith and its existence influenced history, such as in evangelisms). From the Christian perspective, Faith in Jesus Christ (as the Son of God, God Himself, who became man while still God, lived a perfectly righteous, sinless life and died on the cross in the place of sinners who, without salvation through Him, will receive God's eternal wrath for their sins) is crucial. I believe that biblically, those who believe in Jesus Christ are saved, and those who don't aren't. The eternal destiny as Christians believe of those who have been saved and who weren't saved are utterly different, a difference between joy that surpasses any known pleasure on earth and sorrow that surpasses any known pain on the earth -- and that for eternity. Since those who truly believe are saved and those who don't are not, the eternal destiny between the believers and the unbelievers are also completely different. That's one way faith is relevant: one's eternity in the afterlife (by which I simply mean the life after the one on this earth) changes completely depending on one's faith in Christ.

So, from the Christian viewpoint, Faith is so relevant because of the difference it makes in one's eternity. Not to deny the possibility of the existence of ulterior motives some have in, at the surface, pursuing Christian ministry of evangelism, but, when properly motivated, a Christian's desire to evangelize is rooted to the desire to obey to God and, in that obedience, out of love for the unbelievers so that they may believe and join in eternal great joy instead of perishing. That makes a Christian, with all his or her beliefs and love for others, see faith as something to share with the others, including unbelievers in the Christian faith, as well as persevere in themselves, which is another way faith is relevant to the world in which we live.

There may be a lot of things to say in terms of Christian worldview and how Faith relates to it, but I won't discuss them all here.

I do want to make a statement, however, before I end this update post regarding the doubt towards the supernatural. Even if I define Faith differently from the initial post, I think I can still say that people still believe in a lot of things that can be doubted apart from the supernatural. People still believe in a lot of things for which there is no absolutely cogent arguments constructed by humans. By that I don't mean arguments that are completely cogent and compelling within reasonable bounds or reasonably compelling arguments; I just want to say that the human mind is capable of doubting anything and thus no human formulated arguments can stand as ones that will undoubtedly compel and convince anyone who encounters it, for there can be, even for the most convincing case any human ever formulated, at least one person who doubts it. Just the fact that counter claims can be formulated to pretty much any claim, no matter how truthful and reasonable the claims are, may actually demonstrate people can doubt pretty much anything as it is possible for the counter-claims (which seemingly can be formulated, though maybe unreasonable and false)
to be believed in by somebody.

With that being said, simply the fact that one can not be absolutely certain about something or the inability of a very certain person to produce an absolutely compelling argument that will undoubtedly convince anyone else do not discount something as false and nonexistent. One might doubt the existence of the chair he or she sits on, but that doesn't discount the chair's existence. If that kind of a criterion can not discount the the truthfulness of "the chair exists," then it probably shouldn't be applied to the supernatural as well. For example, "the existence of a Christian God was not agreed by all who encountered a case for him, and therefore there must be no Christian God" is invalid. Maybe more people doubt the existence of God than those who doubt the existence of the chair, but still the principle is that just because something can be doubted alone is not a good enough reason to say that something is not true.

Some might not believe in the existence of God with a case full of reasons why not to believe in God, which I personally don't agree to. But my message, that just because the supernatural can be doubted alone is not a reason enough to conclude that the supernatural does not exist (and, if I am to personally stand up for my beliefs, the possibility to doubt the existence of God alone is not a reason good enough to conclude that God does not exist), is not necessarily more concerned of those who have reasons for why they doubt the existence of God, but more concerned of the stance that "one can doubt, therefore God must not exist". By now I might risk sounding repetitive, but possibility of doubt alone is not a reason good enough to conclude that God does not exist. Asking, rather, why one can doubt, and seeing if the reasons are good enough (and doing the say for why one can believe) is better than simply saying, "one can doubt; therefore it's false". To use an analogy, the possibility of doubting the existence of my chair behind me alone is not a sufficient reason to conclude dogmatically it does not exist, but rather the reason that I don't see my chair anywhere behind me and I don't feel it when I feel for it would be a better ground for concluding that the chair does not exist.

As the supernatural (more precisely for me, God) is quite different from a physical chair, the reasons for concluding the existence or lack of it would also differ. But in this post I won't discuss that much.

I admit I may have sounded less relevant to a direct response to the question, and that I might have discussed personal matters with more personal opinions and did not make necessarily an empirical observation on things as much as I expressed my opinions (at least at certain sections). I thank you, all who read it up to here, for reading.

If anyone wants further discussion or expression of his or her opinion, feel free to make comments or email me (but I request that it be courteous; if I failed to meet that criterion myself, I apologize; point out for me where you thought I was rude and I'll try to fix my problems in this post).
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The question I will respond to is, "How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?"

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines faith as it follows:

• 1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

• 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

• 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>

 For this particular post, I would like to define faith as belief and trust in something for which one can doubt about (and therefore has no absolutely cogent proofs for it -- for if there were, then the person wouldn't be able to doubt the matter). This often times may be connected to religion, and true enough, many religious faiths involve believing in something or someone that can not be seen directly with the five senses we most often use. However, I would like to say that even aetheists are not independent from faith when applying the definition I have presented for this blog post. This point can be made by simply presenting the fact that some people in fact do believe in the existence of a deity (I do; I hold the Christian faith -- my first blog post may be referred to for further descriptions), which demonstrates that the aetheists' belief (that there is no god) can also be doubted by the human mind; if that is so, it means that the aetheists, too, believe and trust in something that does not have an absolutely cogent argument for.

Regardless of the basis on which people claim certain beliefs, somewhere along the process there is faith, the belief and trust in something that can be doubted, involved. People's knowledge of anything demands that they, somewhere along the way, give trust to something they can doubt. To justify this, I'll use the example of what might be considered a belief process that involves little faith; by showing how even this case involves faith, I can make the point that everyone has faith in something. I do not fear that the ground under my feet will collapse when walk through the school campus' brick sidewalks. I justify my lack of fear with statistics (that I have made countless steps on the sidewalk and none of them resulted in a sudden collapse of the ground), pointing out it demonstrates the improbability of it to happen now -- especially given the lack of significant change in the ground (no earthquake happened, no one dug out the soil overnight). I also might give scientific reasons as to how the ground is sturdy enough to keep me on the surface. One may wonder, how is faith, belief or trust in something that can be doubted, relevant here? Several ways, I say.

First, I have to trust my memory to rely on the statistics -- but is not my memory subject to error? Can I not doubt that my memory is flawed? Not to say that my memory is completely disfunctional (I don't; I think it works well enough for me to live daily life without being thrown into a complete identity crisis in each second of obscurity), but it still can not be denied that I am giving trust in something that can be doubted. One might say, then, that there is a reason why I can trust my memory (why I am not having faith when I trust it), for generally, it proved to function well enough. However, that is also statistics that demands my trust in my memory, so how can I, without a atom-size of a doubt (which is the case in which I am giving zero faith, for there is no room for doubt), know that my memory about my memory is trustworthy enough for me to trust my memory regarding the ground that creates the basis on which I can trust the ground?

Second, I have to trust my senses which can be flawed (and thus have room for doubt and thus demand a degree of trust in something that does not have an absolutely cogent argument for).

Having said that, I would like to say that even logicians still have faith in something. At minimum, they have faith in their ability to reason and think logically.

Faith isn't always explicit in the sense that the person who holds it recognizes that he or she is having faith in something. For example, many people generally don't live with explicit consciousness of their faith in their senses -- they don't say, "I trust that my eyes are functional and can let me be aware of the light that is being reflected from the duck in the pond, and therefore I trust that I am seeing a duck in the pond"; they just act as if their eyes were functional, which isn't an explicit conscious action of placing trust in something always, but nonetheless trust. If they didn't have that trust, they would not truly think they saw a duck in the pond.

The point can be raised, however, that the more passive forms of trust (the unconscious trust) are not truly faith, and therefore not everybody live with faith in something. To that, I would respond, then, that even when conceding to the point that the more passive forms don't constitute faith, it is still true that we can doubt to even the seemingly most unshakeable truths, and after casting that doubt, then it must be true that the person who still acts as if something is true has a trust in that thing. For instance, a man might never have given second thoughts to his sense, and if the passive reliance isn't faith, then he didn't have faith in his senses. But once he was exposed to how people can still doubt their senses (and thus the sense can be doubted), then his decision to trust in his senses nonetheless is a decision to believe in something in spite of the possibilty of his doubting of his senses (unless the man does not truly heed attention to the possible doubts and live exactly like he used to with no awareness of the possibility of doubting his senses in spite of coming to know it). This could be, then, with the definition already presented for this post, faith.

Before I go on, I would like to say that the possibility for someone to doubt something does not make that thing false necessarily. Even the most evident truth, which, when everything is considered accurately and truthfully, is undoubtable, can be doubted by the human being. This may be because of our lack of capacity to fathom grand things fully (at least in the moments of doubt), our lack of capacity to learn of the new thing (for example, like it is very hard for a person born blind to understand what colors look like, it can be very hard for a five-sensed human being to learn of certain things about this world), our lack of capacity to produce a case so absolutely cogent that it would convince any intellectual person without a shadow of a doubt (and the prior lacks might be able to be attributed for this lack, as the inability to fathom or learn truths so absolutely and fully can contribute to the inability to fully communicate that thing; however, how could we be so sure that even when the truth is well apprehended by the person that the person has a communication skill so powerful to effectively display that truth without taking the others to where he or she discovered the truth himself/herself?), and perhaps even the ability to doubt just about anytihng, including the most self-evident truth.

To simply state my stance about things that can be doubted (apart from the previous paragraph which may sound like rambling), just because we, people, can doubt something doesn't neccessiate that thing's falsehood. Rather, we might be able to doubt even the truths, so believing in the truth may demand faith; also, because just about anything can be doubted by people, in general, faith (in the sense that one believes and trusts in something that can be doubted) is a part of any human belief system.

Having said that, just because faith is involved does not make the belief arbitrary; also, just because something seems to have evidence and reasons for does not exclude a trust and belief in spite of the possibility for the human mind to doubt it; finally, the human mind's capacity to doubt something does not make that thing necessarily false. Also, just because one believes in something does not make that thing truth.

So, to speak more directly in response to the question, "How does Faith relate to the world in which we live," I belive that faith (if defined as believing in or trusting in something that can be doubted or does not have an absolutely cogent argument for) is relevant to the world in which we live by being part of the general human experience when people believe in pretty much anything, for anything can be doubted by the human mind and thus any belief humans have involve at least somewhere in the process trusting in something that could be doubted.

Now, I would like to respond to the question in a different way: how does "Faith" in the Christian approach relate to the world in which we live? I have already expressed in my first post that I am a Christian. So, to me, Faith in God (even if others may cast doubts at Him and I too fall into moments of doubt at times) is qutie essential. If faith is to believe in something that can not be seen, and something that cannot be seen as absolutely cogent (if it can't be seen to begin with, then the human mind with the function to doubt may more easily doubt that thing), my belief in God is faith, or involves faith. Do I believe that it is reasonable to believe in God? Yes it absolutely is. Do I believe that it takes faith? Most certainly. I might need a lot of space to fully elaborate on this subject (not that I have in mind that much content, but as discussions continue, it might happen to be so), but I would like to conclude with saying that believing in God is one of the most mad (if not the maddest) and yet the most reasonable thing to do.

God can not be seen nowadays with our physical eyes. He is invisible to our eyes; our nose do not smell a God-smell, and I don't hear audible divine voices talk to me. There are many things that might seem to suggest that this world does not have an order established by a holy deity. If my approach simply limited to my mind and my senses, then it is madness to believe in someone who cannot be seen with the eyes and the existence of whom is was questioned by bright minds and intellects.

But if I take a look at this, it makes sense. First, God is infinite; trying to fit the entire space in the universe in a tiny teacup has a better chance of success than fitting God into the entire universe. Is that an overstatement? I don't think so. God's infinitude means the size of the universe increased exponentially (say, the size of the universe to the power of the size of the universe) is so very negligible in light of God. Then, it makes sense that I don't fully comprehend Him; as a matter of fact, I'd very much rather prefer to follow the infinite Lord that I can not fully comprehend than a very big but still finite being that I can fully comprehend who happens to have the title "god". Thus, my lack of full understanding of Him is no good enough basis for me to say He is not there. His unseen nature to the physical eye in a direct manner is no reason to say that He is not existent (otherwise, we couldn't say gravity wasn't there -- though we see gravity acting on masses we don't see the force itself visibly, do we? And I think there are things that are the work of God which evidence His existence, though I can't see Him with my physical eyes).

Also, I would like to say, my Christian belief is that when I was yet an unregenerate sinner I could not have come to faith in God without His grace and His enabling of me to see Him. I had no better chance in coming to believe in Him than a pile of dry bones to come back to life as breathing people with flesh without Him in His power and grace enabling me. And perhaps that's why I might say it is unreasonable and yet so very reasonable to believe in God; it is unreasonable because my reason and logic apart from His grace and regeneration could not find Him (and thus unreasonable according to my reason without His work that enabled me to believe in Him); at the same time, I believe, because He enabled me in grace and showed me that it is absolutely true that He, God, is there, and that Christ is my Lord and Savior whom I desperately needed, it is perfectly reasonable to believe in Him I have come to know perfectly. And this part won't be agreed upon easily, especially if the person concerned have not experienced it him or herself. But I would like to say that I believe that the true God, Creator of the universe, is true, independent of the human minds' opinion regarding His existence.

My Native Culture and My Religious Worldview

Question: What factors of your native culture have informed your religious world view? Explain the impact of these factors.


Before further response, I'd like to mention that I am not entirely confident that I am aware of what my native culture is. I was born to Korean parents, but my family has (especially in my toddler and childhood years) spent substantial time outside of Korea, and I find the way my parents interact with me quite different from that in the stereotypical "orthodox Korean" families. Of course, stereotypes will not completely satisfy an anthropologist, so this alone would not serve to truly demonstrate if my family is quite similar to the general Korean culture. Nonetheless, the point can still be made that I am not exactly sure if my native culture is exactly part of the general Korean culture. So I will speak more in terms of the cultures of my family and other places I have been exposed in some influential manner, such as school, and the impacts of these cultures on my world view.

To begin with my family, I was born to Evangelical Christian parents who eventually became missionaries to the country of Tanzania, Africa. Approximately, since the eighth month of my life until the tenth one, I was a missionary kid in Tanzania with occasional visits to the neighboring country, Kenya, furloughs back to Korea, and some other travels out of Tanzania. Without having to comment upon my parents and their faith and spirituality, I can still I was exposed to the evangelical Christianity since a very young age. My thinking wasn't quite matured then (not to say that I am free from all callowness now; but my thinking could be described as, and probably rightly, simpler back then), and I'm not sure how well I comprehended the Christian theology then. Nonetheless, it was not an awkward thing for me to be a theist, regardless of my grasp of Christian theology and faith in Jesus Christ.

I feel compelled to claim now, that I am now a Christian. I am not exactly sure when I had my conversion, but I can say right now as I write this post that I believe in Jesus Christ, God's Son and God Himself (to clarify, I believe in the Holy Trinity, that there is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit); I believe that He came to earth as a man while still being fully God, and that He died on the cross, three days after which He was resurrected; I believe that humans, including myself, can be saved from sin and the punishment for sin only by believing in Jesus Christ who completed all the works necessary for the salvation for anyone who believes in Him. Having said some part of who I am now, I'll return to my family.

So, the Bible and the church, as well as the existence of God was not completely foreign to me at least partially because of the family I was born in.

The society outside of my family, too, had a cultural impact that made Christianity not such an alien thing for me. I think it is quite obvious how the church would have done this -- a place of worship of God exposed me to Christianity and did not place a stigma in having faith. Two schools (one attended in my first three elementary years with possibly some time spent as a kindergardener, and the other attended for part of my second semester of the sixth grade year until now, my 11th grade year) I attended were Christian schools with chapels. I have been in dormitories of a boarding program with Christian staffs since my arrival to the school I currently attend; classes were taught by Christian instructors. Speaking in terms of general cultural impact, these groups that I have been part of exposed me to Christianity and made me more likely to at least assent to Christianity, even if I wasn't truly converted until a certain point.

I wouldn't necessarily say that the cultural exposure alone contributed to making me a serious Christian, but it could have contributed -- though I'm not perfectly sure to what extent it did. I do figure that the Christian culture might have even a greater impact on me when I was a personal believer, rather than when I merely assented superficially at the surface to some of the Christian beliefs.
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The blue text are additions or editing done after the initial posting on 18 November 2010.