two people that have rocked me in the past month, part 2

"Binna Kim remembers waking up in a pool of blood. She was on the floor of her bedroom, it was dark--perhaps the middle of the night--and her head was throbbing...Her head was feeling it was about to split open, she had an idea: She would crawl to the bathroom tub. It was low and sturdy enough to support her. She would use it to stand up, then she could figure out the next step. 

She reached the bathroom and passed out.  

On April 6, 2006, Binna's father, Sang In Kim, wrote a suicide letter to his church pastor, explaining he was killing himself because he owed people tens of thousands of dollars he could not repay. The 55-year-old asked the pastor to take care of his family. But that night, he changed his mind; he would take his entire family with him..."

This is how the KoreAm article about Binna Kim begins. You can find the entire story here. Yet although the story begins tragically with her father killing her mother and brother and attempting to murder her, it ends with an immense ray of hope.

You see, not only does Binna miraculously survive that horrific night, she, through the help of close family friends, amazing doctors, and, ultimately, God, ends up being able to reconstruct her life, move forward, and find hope.

You can find this on her facebook page: "...we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:3-4)".

If anyone can talk about hope after suffering, Binna Kim can.

There's a lot in Binna's story that rocked me, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. I think I'll just mention a couple of things here though:

1. Later in the article the writer shares that Binna is eventually able to forgive her father. In fact, it sounds from the article as if this is a pretty big part of why she is able to have hope and look forward to the future. This is amazing. 
2. Murder suicides among the Korean adult community are sadly far more common than we think. That spring in 2006, there were 14 lives claimed in Korean murder-suicides, all in Southern California, all perpetrated by the fathers of the families. 

This Friday night at United Life we're inviting Dr. Doni Kwak, a local Edmonds-based Korean American psychologist to share with us about the relationship between mental health and following Jesus Christ. If anyone needs to hear this, it's the Korean American community. I think we tend to believe that if we're going to church, praying, and doing the whole American Dream thing, we're doing fine. But the truth is that often masks deeper issues and keeps us from addressing them. 

I encourage you to join us this Friday night. You can find the event information here.

two people that have rocked me in the past month, part 1

their names: Emile Mack and Binna Kim

Okay, so I haven't met either of them personally. But their stories (which I read about in KoreAm magazine) impacted me this past month in ways that interviews don't usually do. Although KoreAm isn't a Christian magazine per se, I saw in their stories a glimpse of one of God's most amazing gifts to us: the gift of Reconciliation. Wait...glimpse is far too light a word: how about banner or billboard? In any case, I think you get the idea: God spoke to me through these stories, and I pray the same for you! 

Emile Mack:

okay, let's start with the basics: Mack was born in Korea, but was adopted by an African American couple at the age of 3. He grew up in the Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles, and eventually rose to become the Deputy Chief of the LA Fire Department. 

Here's an excerpt from the original interview: 

But Mack, 53, is quite used to standing out—and not just because he’s been a firefighter for 32 years. Rather, the high cheek bones and almond-shaped eyes may signal a Korean background, but his identity, his culture and the place he called home throughout his childhood were intimately tied to the parents who raised him. That is to say, he long identified with the African American culture, and shades of brown were the faces with whom he felt the closest.

After being abandoned at a South Korean police station as a baby, he was adopted in 1960 by Undine and Clarence Mack, an African American couple. That statement alone is enough to floor people unfamiliar with his backstory. Yet, as Emile tells it, it’s really a simple tale: The Children’s Christian Society brought photographs of children from a South Korean orphanage to his parents’ Los Angeles church. And Undine and Clarence decided to make the 3-year-old boy with the big button cheeks their son.

And all the queries that naturally arise upon learning that his parents are black—Did you struggle with your identity? Did you ever feel like you didn’t belong? Do you consider yourself black or Asian?—are quietly shut down with answers that make the questioner feel slightly foolish for the asking.

“I grew up not trying to identify, but naturally identifying with the people around me, the African American culture,” says Mack. “From before I can remember, I was surrounded by African American people. They were the ones I saw every day, they were my family, the people I lived with, who loved me, took care of me and played with me.”

Here's a link to the rest of his story as told by Elizabeth Eun. 

Mack's story is, I believe, an example of an amazing truth about God that probably doesn't get talked about enough. 

I don't know about you, but when I read about how Mack's parents raised him the way that they did, teaching him to love people of all races, demonstrating that through their own adoption of someone outside of their own race, not to mention the fact that they really lived out what they believed not just at the beginning when Mack was a cute little three year old, but through his adolescent years and beyond, I was deeply moved. And I would argue that what's moving about this isn't just how awesome his parents were, but that something awesome about God was shining through the way Mack's parents acted and loved. 

And that awesome thing is this: God's love is a reconciling love, and he desires that we both experience and practice that love ourselves. 

It's no coincidence that Mack's parents made the decision to adopt him after being shown his picture at a church. God is all about this. The cross itself is God's bridge to us. Jesus sacrificed in order to reconcile us to God. And Mack's story is a great example of what this looks like when Christ's followers live this out. No, let me go farther: it's a call for us to live this out as well. 

Am I saying go out and adopt someone not from your own ethnic group? No, not necessarily. But there are so many ways that we can and must be practicing reconciling love every single day of our lives. We are divided from so many others in so many ways, and the person I introduce in part 2 of this post series will show that. Race is just one of the ways we're divided from one another. But the truth is this: we are called to build bridges where the world around us divides. 

Are you practicing God's reconciling love in your own relationships? 

Are you even seeing the people God is calling you love, or is your world so divided that there are people you've already cut out of your vision? 


photo source: http://iamkoream.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/F-Emile-0211-PP-Dad.jpg