My Pastor, Rev Moon

Clark Eberly

It is very, very difficult for anyone to understand someone who, like my pastor, asserts that Jesus gave him a messianic mission.  Believe me, I am acutely, painfully aware of this!  Many people say to themselves, “How can he possibly claim such a thing?”        

                

But suppose I don’t insist that you believe as I do, that Jesus appeared to my pastor when he was a young man, and asked him to take on such an incredible mission -- to become a teacher, healer and parental figure, helping to promote peace in the world.  Actually I’m not naive enough to insist on any such thing!  Unless God gives a person a direct, dramatic and clear answer to a prayer, it is very difficult to digest or accept this idea.   

                       

What I would like to ask you to understand is that my pastor completely believes what he says.  He is one hundred per cent sincere in his conviction of the genuineness of his meeting with Jesus, and ever since he promised Jesus to take on this mission, he has sincerely tried to be faithful to it in spite of the cost.  Even if you do not agree with his theology, I’d like you know that Reverend Moon is someone of great courage, as well as sincerity of heart.

Rev Moon strives for Reunification of North & South Korea

One of the best possible ways to gain an understanding of this is to examine my pastor’s recently-published memoirs, “As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen.”  In this autobiography, for example, he explains what he experienced as a young preacher in the late 1940s, shortly after Korea had been liberated from Japan following the end of World War II.  As you know, at this time Korea was partitioned between North and South, and the North was swiftly turned into a Communist state.  Under a regime that was hostile toward any form of religion, Reverend Moon was arrested by police in Pyongyang and tortured to the point that they thought he had died.  They threw him out in the snow-covered ally behind the police station, but when my pastor’s friends came to collect his body for burial, one of them noticed a very faint sign of breath.  They took him to someone’s home, and over many weeks they nursed him back to health.

When he was able to walk again, some of Reverend Moon’s friends begged him to join the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans who were fleeing to the South.  They pointed out that the border was still open.  They told him that as he was by now a marked man, his life was in danger every day he remained in the North.  In the South, he could continue his work in relative safety.

To me, one of the astounding things about my pastor is that at this point, he told his friends, “No.”  He explained that he was certain that God needed him to remain in the North, no matter what the danger.  How many of us could do something like this, having just barely survived brutal torture, and with freedom and safety beckoning not many miles away?  Reverend Moon went right back to preaching in Pyongyang, even though he knew for a certainty that this would lead to further suffering.  Within months he was arrested again.  This time he was sentenced to five years imprisonment in a place called Heungnam on the east coast of North Korea.  Due to the terrible conditions in the prison, the average life-span for an inmate was about six months.

My pastor was liberated from Heungnam by American military forces a few months into the Korean War, on October 14, 1950.  He had survived for more than two years, enduring starvation rations, overwork and disease, and had barely escaped a systematic execution of prisoners by prison authorities fearing the advance of U.N. forces.  Shortly before his turn to be killed, the American bombing of Heungnam become so heavy that the guards panicked and fled. Those prisoners who were still alive were free to simply walk away.  With two friends he made his way, mostly on foot, to the southern port city of Pusan, arriving in January, 1951.  Due to the closed and guarded nature of the North, he remained unable to return to his homeland in the north until the early 1990s.

In 1991, almost forty years after leaving as a refugee, Reverend Moon received permission to visit North Korea.  He met with then-leader Kim Il Sung and did his best to persuade Kim to give up the North’s nuclear weapons program -- for the sake of both North and South Koreans as well as the world.  They also discussed other concerns, such as the desirability of allowing visits between members of families that had been divided between North and South following the Korean War.

As to why he met with the man whose government had caused him and his countrymen so much suffering, Reverend Moon has said, “I met him with a parent’s heart.  In true love, there is no such concept as ‘enemy.’”

Love and Respect each other

Even if we do not agree on every aspect of theology, let’s be not enemies, but allies in trying to make the world around us a little better, happier and healthier.  And finally, if after reading the foregoing comments, you still feel irritated or angry by what I have written, here is a thought you might like to consider: When we encounter someone who represents a philosophy or belief with which we strongly disagree, we can still see this encounter as something good.  Why?  Well, we can say to ourselves, “I think that fellow is deluded and crazy, but I’m so glad he is around.  He (or she) is a living, breathing confirmation that freedom of faith and freedom of speech are still alive and thriving in our beautiful nation.”


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