Hell If I Know!

As promised, this week I'm writing about going to church last weekend. It took me a long time to get started on this post. It turns out that I have a lot to say, and at the same time, very little to say. I guess I'll start with Phil.

I met Phil a month after I got here. I was in Seoul for a meet-up of foreigners and Koreans who want to meet foreigners. Basically, some guy just rents out a bar and serves refreshments, and people meet people. It's nice.

So I met some folks, had some drinks, ate some snacks and then 11 o'clock rolled around and it was time for the party to come to an end. Sadly, the bar had other plans for the late evening, and they were kicking us out. That suited me fine. I was really tired that weekend and ready to go home anyway.

I got on the subway and settled in for my long ride back. I was just spacing out staring at the empty seats across from me, nothing on my mind, when the train became the second place that night to evict me on account of lateness. Going from Deokso to Seoul takes anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes, depending on where you're going. This little gathering was a little more than an hour away from my place. And if you know your subway systems, you know this: They hate to be out late. Even in Tokyo, the most populous damn city in the world, the trains stop running at midnight. Get a cab, you lout! the city planners seem to be saying.

Here's where Phil comes in. Being evicted from a train along with a couple dozen others seemed like the perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation with a random foreigner. He was the only other foreigner around, so why not play the spy game with him? The spy game is where you talk in English with another native speaker in a country where hardly anyone speaks English. It's like a secret code! We could be talking about stamps, or football, or Whitney Houston singles, or whatever. They'll never break our code!

I saw some major super experts at the spy game a few weeks ago. On the way back from this snowboard jump competition thing they did in Seoul, there were 5 deaf (or maybe just hard of hearing) guys having what appeared to be a really involving and fast-flowing conversation in sign language. It was IMPOSSIBLE not to stare. An animated conversation conducted in silence. It was so fucking cool. I will never look that cool playing the spy game. The most interesting part about sign language conversation with many participants: they're always scanning around the circle of people to make sure they aren't missing what anyone is "saying".

Back to Phil. We started talking and we found out we were both headed in the same direction, so we should split the cab fare. He was getting off before me, in Guri, about 7 or 8 minutes cab ride from Deokso, but right along the way. We found a cab as soon as we left the train station, as they were all lined up outside to take advantage of the trains stopping. A cab driver looked at us and revealed himself to have psychic powers by asking "Deokso yuhk?" meaning "Deokso station?" Yes, indeed, Mr. Cab Driver.

During the cab ride I'm asking Phil a lot of questions. I'm intrigued because, although he is a teacher here (like almost all foreigners living here) he is around 40 years old. It's kind of novel to meet someone as old as 30. 40 is downright mysterious.

He tells me that he found out about teaching Korea because of his church in England. It seems his church of choice back home was a Korean church. The pastor was Korean, and so were most of the congregants. Phil volunteered to help some of them out by giving them English lessons. He enjoyed it, and they thought he was good at it, so when he hurt his back and had to quit his previous job, coming to Korea to teach English seemed like a natural fit.

I was intrigued. For a while I was describing myself as agnostic in the sense of "I really don't think there's a God, but I know I can't be sure". But about four months before coming to Korea that changed. At this point, I have almost no idea what I believe. It's all very ambiguous for me, and I can't say I feel certain about anything at all. But I definitely lean towards believing that there is such a thing as a greater purpose to our lives, and I'm also pretty sure that strict materialism (meaning the idea that only what is physical is "real") is wrong. I like the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. I don't know if I really believe in them, but you should check 'em out.

I wanted to talk to Phil about church. I thought it would be interesting to go and see how I felt. I can't see myself coming to be an adherent of any organized religion, or any sort of religion that has some book they point to and say "There it is. It's all in there." Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, it could be very moving to go to a place that serves as a center of both faith and community in the lives of many people. I figured I'd get something out of it.

Phil told me he'd love to have me along one day. Talked about how he just feels like something is missing when he hasn't been going to church. It seemed very important to him. I gave him my phone number. Why not?

Well, it turned out he would need that phone number right away. When we got to Guri, he got out of the cab and we had driven off before he remembered to pay his part of the fare. He called me up immediately, sounding very embarrassed and told me he'd pay me back when he saw me again. I said not to worry about it.

Flash forward a couple of months and I've just never felt like calling Phil up. It's still in the back of my mind, but I'm not really thinking about it. I'm on the subway one day, heading home after buying an SNES (hell yes!) when some foreigner across the aisle seems to want to play the spy game with me. I don't want to play, and I'm listening to music, so I just nod at him. At the next stop, the person next to me gets up and the foreigner comes over to me with a 10,000 won note in hand (that's about $10). It's Phil! I didn't recognize him! He hands me the bill and says he never paid me back for the cab. What a man!

Well after that there was just no excuse. The next weekend I could just go ahead and pencil in "going to church" on my daily planner that I don't actually have. Unless you mean my BRAIN!

I met Phil at the subway platform in Guri at about 9 AM the next Sunday. Immediately I had a rush of church nostalgia. Phil was drinking coffee and the smell suddenly transported me back to my childhood. It reminded me instantly of the smell at the tables where all the ladies would gather after the service to chat and drink coffee. Church coffee smells different somehow. Even if it's not church coffee. Even if it's Guri subway platform convenience store coffee, if it's being drunk by someone early Sunday morning it is church coffee, and it smells different.

And unfortunately, that's where the magic ended that day. Well, that might be going a bit far. But it is true that that sudden flooding of an old memory was the most vivid emotional experience of the trip. The sermon was about tithing.

Tithing, for those not familiar with the term, is giving 10% of what you earn to God. That means giving it to the church. This is explicitly stated in the Bible that you are to do this. The pastor made it quite clear (the sermon was in Korean but Phil and I had little radio receivers with earbuds so we could listen to a translation being done by one of the congregants) that the rule about tithing applies to absolutely everyone, and that a man who makes $100 a month has as much obligation to give $10 a month as a man who makes $10,000 a month has to give $1000. This was the topic of the entire sermon. Poor Phil. He apologized to me about our luck after the service. Then he told me this tidbit which was just tragic. He recently convinced another friend of his who is skeptical, or even antagonistic about religion, to come with him to a service at a totally separate church. The sermon that day? It was about tithing. Phil's skeptical friend felt completely validated. The church just wants your money, he said.

Now, I know some of you who are reading are faithful Christians yourselves. I have a sincere question for you (and anyone else who cares to comment, too). When I met Phil the second time, I wondered if that coincidence held meaning. As a person who has no idea what he believes, apparent coincidences are wide-open to interpretation. Maybe there are no coincidences. Maybe coincidences are all that there is, and everything, including the universe is just one big coincidence. I had renewed vigor about the idea of going to church after that second meeting because, hey, maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn't, but maybe it did.

That was a coincidence that seemed to point in one direction, and then I had one that seemed to point in the other. Or rather, Phil had one. Both of his God-curious friends get a sermon on tithing? I went to church plenty of times as a kid and I don't ever remember a sermon about tithing. It's not exactly the first topic pastors want to go to. It's not a very popular one. It doesn't do much to get people excited about going to church, and really, that's what all pastors want. Even if a pastor is just looking to take people's money (which I think is probably a rare pastor indeed. a person with a fraudulent nature and an ability to lie convincingly and con people could make more money with far less effort in lots of other jobs.) their first priority will still be packing those pews. Tithing is, at most, a twice a year type topic. For both of Phil's tag-alongs to pick a day where they'd get this not-at-all-friendly-to-newcomers type message is quite a coincidence itself.

Acknowledging, of course, that it might mean nothing at all, and that all coincidences are just noise, what could it mean if it's more than that? What does a devout Christian make of this? My thought is, if it does have some meaning, or carries some message from the Universe to me, it's that organized religion is probably not where I'm supposed to be looking for answers. I feel like organized religion, with its "here are the answers" appeal, are lacking in mysticism.

But what on Earth could it mean for Phil? I dunno. In any case, I don't think that a coincidence that seems to lead away from church is some kind of effective evidence against the Christian God. Taking the longview, feeling unengaged by a sermon about tithing could be one step on a long roundabout path towards salvation. But it seems strange.

I don't know how to end this post anymore than I knew how to begin it, so I'll just leave you with something I wrote in my notebook a few months ago.

"If there is purpose, I don't know it. If God is trying to tell me something, I haven't been able to make out the words. It's time to make it up."

I hope this post was entertaining or interesting. I can usually assess what I write through other people's eyes pretty well, but I'm totally in the dark this time. My own feelings are too ambiguous. I'd love to see all kinds of comments or questions, on the blog, or e-mail or on skype, in person, or whatever. As always, I love you all.

Randy