VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [10] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 03:02:43 06/10/04 Thu
Author: Chris
Subject: What is faith?

I often observed in UBF a certain kind of "magical thinking" which is hard for me to define but it was definitely there and it definitely rubbed off to my mindset as well.

One prominent example is the superstition belief that something terrible will happen if you leave UBF or speak against UBF, which was fostered by Lee even in Sunday messages (see here).

But it was more than that, this "magical thinking" was ubiquitous in UBF. We believed that everything will work out good if we obey the leaders, particularly concerning marriage. If you chose the marriage partner prescribed by your leader, then - "magically" - the marriage would be blessed and happy. This "magical thinking" is called "faith" in UBF, and that's why UBF's arranged marraiges are also called "marriage by faith."

Another type of "magical thinking" was believing that somehow UBF would grow to a "Kingdom of priests," though history showed that UBF was a big failure and the only thing that is growing over time is its bad reputation as a cult. This was called "vision" or also "faith."

And there was the magical thinking that the rightness of your action has something to do with "being on the right side." I saw this even in the leaders like Kaleb Hong. There was a short period of time during the reform movement where he was undetermined. He had a lot of background knowledge, enough to see that UBF had a huge problem, but he chose to ignore it and simply be loyal on the side of Lee/Barry, believing that "magically" these problems would go away.

There were many other kinds of magical thinking. Maybe somebody can give more examples.

Maybe this aspect of magical thinking has some root in Korean shamanism (see the recent postings). (However, a similar thing can also often be noticed with charismatic/pentecostal Christians in the western world!) Maybe somebody could elaborate on that.

Anyway, I found an article about this phenomenon which I think is worth reading and maybe a thought-provoking impulse for UBFers or us ex UBFers who are still somewhat tainted with UBFic "magical thinking."

What Is Faith?

I think that is really good food for thought.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:



Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]



Forum timezone: GMT-6
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.