Title: Man without Man / Mark 5:1-20
Contents
Man without man / Mark 5:1-20
All human beings are born as noble human beings. Who doesn't want to live right? Everyone will want to work sincerely, feel the reward of life, and try to embody their true human values. Thus, they long for a true society for human beings, in which each other neither oppresses nor oppresses, neither deceives nor deceives, economically, nor deprives others. We are at a historical point where we need to see, think, and act properly in the real world. The Christian faith provides a unified meaning to God and man, the present and the afterlife, the visible and the invisible world, time and eternity, and spirit and body. Faith has a beginning and an end, and has a purpose and an economy. Life, history, and the world are advancing toward perfection in the history of God's salvation from the beginning to the end.
Humans themselves have never been as problematic as they are today. Today, the phenomenon of dehumanization in various fields is deepening, and human beings themselves are threatened. The present day is often referred to as the 'era of dehumanization' or 'the age of unmanned people'. Here, we realize that the realization of humanization or the restoration of human beings is the task of the times. If the core of the Christian message is implied by the confession that "Jesus is the Christ," then why does it mean that Jesus becomes "our Christ", and if Christ means the Savior, then what does it mean to save us, or all mankind? What existential or social salvation we long for, that Jesus can be the Christ to us? How can we proclaim human salvation without knowing human beings, and how can we proclaim 'today's salvation' without knowing today's social and historical situation? This is because the true meaning of the theology of human absence is not to save Jesus Christ, but to save 'human beings'.
Let's illuminate us today through an event that occurred at the time of Jesus. In Gerasa, a psychopath lived in a cemetery. People bound him with chains, but to no avail. Because this person is possessed by a demon, he breaks the chain and runs away. This man is a very troublesome person in the town, and everyone wanted him to be gone.
When Jesus arrived in this region, Jesus had compassion on the mentally ill and commanded the demons to go out. The demon begged that he could not leave this region as a military ghost. The ghost asked if it was okay to enter the herd. When Jesus gave permission, all the demons went into the herd of pigs and drowned with the pigs in the sea.
Due to this incident, the villagers beg Jesus to leave the region. The villagers said that 2,000 pigs were more valuable than a single human found the summit. You can see the degenerate human beings who value material possessions more than affection for one human being.
The voice of God through Isaiah is also deplorable of the fact that the people of Israel are swept away by reality and are ignoring God's commands.
How is our life today? This human-made civilization sends people to the outskirts of the city, and the center of the city is filled with concrete walls and competition rather than recognition and love. People are confined to concrete walls in order to survive, working day by day like a part of a machine. Human relations are in the form of flattery and bribery.
The consequences of dehumanization caused by unconditional material growth are further exacerbating the absurdity of various societies. People are losing their personalities, and even people can easily witness the reality that they are regarded only as use values like objects.
So, there is a saying that satirizes the current generation. For the rich, 'there are heirs, but no children', at school, 'there are teachers and students, but no teachers and pupils', and in the home, 'there are fathers and mothers, but no fathers and mothers'.
What has been the mission of the Korean church in the 2nd century? The slogan of missions set by the early missionaries was 'Let's believe in Jesus and be enlightened'. By awakening the ignorant people and establishing hospitals and schools, Christianity had planned the country's future. After that, during the Japanese colonial period, Christianity came to be called 'Believe in Jesus and let's go to heaven', especially in the atmosphere of disrespect for Koreans, under the colonial policy of respecting humanity. However, today's mission task is to 'believe in Jesus and become human'.
Humanization, humanity. being human. Working on this is something only Christians can do. It is the salvation of Christianity that can save this society, and that is the way of human recovery.
Those who only care about 2,000 pigs! So, the people who tried to drive out even Jesus are the people who are suffering from 'absence of people' right now.
Efforts for humanization are the work of restoring humanity that God created and given to humans, and it is the most urgent task to be done as a manager who takes care of God's world.
The Christian faith believes that this world is not a destiny that operates on its own or a realm that can be manipulated arbitrarily by humans, but is God's workplace to be saved through Jesus Christ. That is why the world is called the field of God's mission. The ultimate goal of mission is to create the foundation for a new history in which God's sovereignty is realized, and to create a responsible society where 'justice' and 'love' are realized in this history. It refers to a responsible society in which the dialectical relationship of repentance, creation, judgment, and forgiveness that continues in the relationship between humanity and God as well as between human beings is realized. It is a society under the human subject in which humans are not used as slaves of machines, but are used as tools for the welfare and love of neighbors and mankind. The Christian faith denies the achievement-oriented reality that makes the relationship between human beings a 'competitor'. This is because, fundamentally, people believe that they can exist only in 'meeting' and 'conversation'.
In the place of life, salvation always takes on its specificity and becomes concrete. To do so, it presupposes the existential situation, social condition, and historical situation at that time. This presentness of salvation is revealed in the humanistic nature of salvation itself. In other words, salvation has its meaning in a difficult situation in which salvation is desperately needed. For those who are drowning, getting them out of the water will be salvation; for those who are ill, to be healed will be salvation; for those who are hungry because there is nothing to eat, food will be salvation; and to those who are thirsty, water will be salvation. Salvation will be liberation for the prisoners, freedom for the oppressed, finding their share for the deprived, standing up for the downtrodden, and regaining human rights for those who have lost their human rights. If we can generalize the salvation of life in this age and say it in one word, it will be called 'humanization', which is the realization of humanization.
The word salvation from sin as defined by Christianity has a modern meaning of overcoming human alienation. It finds its pivot point in the realization of humanization in which people live as people.
Realization of Humanization If there is today's salvation, what meaning does the Christian message of salvation have for the realization of humanization, which is urgently requested in this era of 'absence of man'? Together with the question, we know that the reality of the kingdom of God comes from our desperate longing for it. The Bible testifies that Jesus came into the world in the realization of 'humanization' (Luke 4:18). This proclamation and practice of 'liberation for the bound and liberty for the oppressed' was the ideology of Jesus' life and his mission. The content is a state in which the grievances of the oppressed class are released. We know that the kingdom of God spoken of in the Bible has an eschatological character. It is an expression of anticipation for the cosmic salvation event that will occur in the future, but it is meaningful in that it is a strong rejection and resistance to the current inhuman ruling powers and systems.
Jesus made human recovery for all the marginalized as his ideology and goal of his life. In the humanization of the marginalized, Jesus sought his own identity. Jesus found his identity in the act of human restoration and humanity
This is because becoming human, the restoration of human beings, is the ultimate and most fundamental salvation for human beings. The economic, political, and religious methods ultimately lead to the realization of human recovery and humanization. Jesus considered this fact deeply and did not choose the same method as the devil's temptation, but instead sacrificed himself to suffering and death for the most fundamental way of salvation, the salvation of life, and the restoration of humanity.
Jesus, who decided to risk his fate for the lives of the underprivileged, had no choice but to challenge the reality that alienated and dehumanized them as a way to do so. Because the law was the substance that dehumanized all life. Because the law made man non-human. Whether to keep the law or not became the criterion for determining whether a person was a 'man' or a sinner or a son of God. What we can clearly confirm is that we did not become sinners simply because we sinned, but we were alienated as 'sinners' because we failed to keep the law. How could they not keep the law did not matter in the slightest. If you break the law, you are unconditionally a sinner.
He observes that the alienation phenomenon of dehumanization, which drives people to be non-humans, lies in the loss of human beings themselves. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? That is, we seek self-identity in Jesus. It means making yourself one with Jesus. It means finding your identity in Jesus. The salvation of life lies in the realization of humanization. Here, Christianity has the significance of being able to talk about people's lives.