Title: The Truth Sets You Free
Contents
During this time, I went to church very hard. Not only did I attend Sunday worship, but I did not miss the three-day service. It was then that I gradually fell in love with the Church of Jesus. Because the Bible answered my question. I didn't read the Bible hard, but whenever I thought, "I don't think this is..." at church, the Bible said, "You're right." And the Bible was so free, unlike what I felt at church. When you say, for example, to birds flying in the air and lilies in the field, "Don't forgive yourself for making a living, you've got everything", you could enjoy the freedom of your birth. And when the schoolboy Pharisee was also wrong, and as he touched a humble prostitute and said, “You are my person who is neither more nor less,” I could feel an infinite sense of liberation. Also, when he said, "It's not the shell, it's only the center," through various intellectual statements about the Sabbath, it was even refreshing. From these words, I came to understand the phrase 'Give me my freedom' that I first saw in a notebook from a friend of mine in high school. Even now, even in front of my bible, 'The Lord is my freedom' is written.
Before I believed in Jesus, I didn't even know if I should win or help when I met someone. However, I was weak mentally and lacked wisdom, so I ended up going to a mental hospital. About that time, I wrote, "Can I be the person I think I am? Anxiety has been with me like fate." I've been living without knowing anything like this. Even though a slave had been living in redemption, I did not know that I was specifically a slave. It has been vaguely thought that the way to freedom lies in what men have made. But things that were dim like looking in an old mirror became clear. It was the truth that set you free. In addition, the dogma of religion that I feared before believing has now been turned into an absolute condition for freedom. Strangely, the absolute condition did not feel like a constraint. And the absolute conditions were easily understood. At this time, I thought of the word 'image of God'. This was understood in such a way that when God created us, he was equipped with a shared code that allows us to communicate with God. It was understood that anyone has a basic code that can communicate with God.
In fact, the Jesuit Code of Ethics is something you can understand even without attending church. Most of what I learned in kindergarten. So, didn't he tell you to be like a child who didn't even study the Bible properly? Sometimes, the kind explanations of the preachers seemed more difficult than the Bible. Now, before believing, the norm or value of 'it's good to do that' has now been changed to 'something you have to do' through belief. This is similar to what I say when I explain the difference between an amateur designer and a professional designer to members of my design team.
Around this time, I wrote an article titled 'Rain falls vertically and flows horizontally'. Without rain falling vertically, there would be no water flowing horizontally. The Bible we read today also says, 'If the Son sets you free, you will be set free'. There is no freedom except through Jesus. If there is no rain from the sky, there is no water flowing sideways.
Until I came to Saegil Church, I learned and felt a lot about the vertical rain from church to church. The reason I went to fast and pray was because I wanted my whole body to be washed by the vertical rain. When I think about it now, it seems that the churches that were a bit disappointing to me at the time also helped my faith in their own way. Through the teachings of those churches, I seem to have realized the common truth that 'the rain that falls and the water that flows sideways are one'. At the end of the Bible we read today, it says, 'You do what you have heard from your Father.' This is as if God were saying, 'Can't you see that the rain that fell vertically flows horizontally?' It is like saying that you should live by practicing what you have been taught. It sounds like you are saying that you can be free.
I saw this in a shabby restaurant in Insa-dong at the time. On a rainy morning, I was eating at a small restaurant frequented by Insa-dong janitors. At that time, the shabby grandmother standing with the plastic cover stuck her head out the door and asked the owner if she would like to buy some greens. At that time, the owner lady said, "I don't buy greens." To the first person I saw, and to a person like my mother, I was just talking, but inside, it didn't seem like that. As Grandma was hesitating at the door, she said, "Grandma, have you eaten?" Grandma said "I ate", but she said, "Grandma, come in" and spread the rice on the table they were eating. I watched closely as I unpacked the rice, and it was unpacking a lot of rice. And while we ate, we put the side dishes on top of Grandma's rice. Watching Grandma and Auntie eat silently, I suddenly got thirsty and couldn't eat. How could that be? She doesn't seem to have been trained in church... How can she eat naturally like that? Ah, the heart of God...
I had the experience of breaking free from the big bondage for a moment. It was Holy Communion. And I felt like I was being baptized. When I left the house and looked outside, everything looked new. The garbage truck next to the restaurant looked new and the people passing by looked new. The morning in the dark sky was like a day in the days of Jesus. It was as if a great world that could not be described was given to me again. As I walked down the alley, I kept saying to myself, "Yes, faith is to live. To live is to live." I'm not sure, but I think I sang the hymn I sang today, 'Let that wave of love overflow forever and ever'. When I think of faith, I vividly recall this event from 20 years ago. There was no restraint of shabbyness, no restraint of poverty, not even the restraint of religion. There was just so much freedom to flow.
In Jesus, the truth has become the Word. And you bought it. They ate, talked, laughed, and prayed. Of course you went to the bathroom. And he died. Lived free and died free. He died to set us free. He showed us that God is free by making us free. The Bible teaches us to follow and learn this life of Jesus. Today, many people in the world are trying to do just that. But the world doesn't seem to be free according to the concept God designed it for. Rather, they say that life is getting harder and harder. Seeing this current state of affairs, God seems to be angry and saying this.
"Eat and eat the fruit of the forbidden fruit, or not eat and be free, do whatever you want, you bastard."