Title: Those Who Build the Tower of Babel
People who build the Tower of Babel.
Genesis 11:1-9.
After graduating from high school, after failing college, I gave up my luck and worked as a clerk in a shopping mall for about a year. At that time, my first monthly salary was 7,000 won. It was because I was an apprentice, but a few months after the apprenticeship ended, my official salary was 10,000 won.
When I got married in 1977, my wife was a school teacher. I continued to serve as a school teacher until the birth of my second child, but I remember my wife's salary in 1977 was about 140,000 won. Before we got married, our monthly income was around 50,000 won. After we got married, our household began to expand.
The country and its people used really incompetent children to get out of poverty. A representative movement was the Saemaul Undong. They made and exported wigs and dispatched troops before Vietnam, using the dollars they received for their bloodshed as a foundation for the country's development. Fortunately, the country is starting to grow. It started developing terribly.
After graduating from seminary in 1978 and becoming a full-time evangelist, the first living expenses I received at the church were 70,000 won. At the board meeting in the fall of that year, one of the deacons said that my salary was too low, and the staff agreed and almost doubled the cost of living, resulting in 130,000 won. Considering that just a year ago, our monthly income was 50,000 won, it means that the size of the economy has doubled and halved.
This year marks the 34th year of marriage. Thinking back then, I became very rich. He became a wealthy man living with his own car in a spacious house that did not feel cold in winter or hot in summer. And thankfully, I was able to live a life without lack.
I don't think there's anything wrong with living with financial stability and enjoying some leisure and leisure time. And they are enjoying life like that without paying much attention to others. But nevertheless, I always live with the tension, 'Isn't my current life too excessive?' I'm too greedy, so I'm like, 'Isn't it going to end up sitting on the floor with money that I can't even eat?' And then, 'Because of me, there are people living subhuman lives in some corner of the world because they don't have the minimum amount of money to eat and spend. Isn't it?' I think and do calculations all the time, and I am quite nervous to live.
I have been recording my income and expenses for 10 years. Not all expenses are recorded in detail. The most important reason I record income and expenses is to find out what percentage of my income I spend for donations, relief, missions and service. Looking at 2010, I spent 53.31% of my income last year and 46.69% was spent on donations, relief, missions and service.
Nevertheless, savings and wealth continue to grow. For my children and especially my husband and I in our old age, I have a wealth of wealth that I count and greedy for. If I go over it, I think it's not mine, and I try to let it go. Until last year, the amount I calculated and thought I had to give was 30% of my fortune. Recently, very recently, the recalculation and thought scale is 50%.
At that time, Dongan Church had less than 4,000 people attending on Sundays for adults. We built a chapel of 3,400 pyeong, but as the number of church members continued to increase, the chapel kept getting smaller.
I changed my mind after attending a church meeting in Jeungguk. ‘If there are more than 5,000 people, we should separate the church and not build it again.’
As a result, it happened. The planting of Sungui Church of High Meaning was the result of such thought and determination.