The Words of the Kim Family Before 2008
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The Words of the Kim Family Before 2008 |
Rev.
Chan Kyun Kim
Rev. Chan Kyun Kim is one of the earliest members of our church. He and his wife are a 36 Blessed Couple, one of the third group of twelve couples which represents Jacob's family, or the Completed Testament He now has one daughter and four sons, all of whom live with their mother in Korea. He joined the Unification Church at the age of 18 (17 in Western reckoning) in 1954.
I was born in North Korea in 1937 in the province of Pyunganbuk-Do, the same province in which True Father was born. My grandfather was Confucian. My father, however, converted to Christianity when he was 50, two years before I was born. He joined the Presbyterian Church and later became a minister. My parents had only two children: my elder sister and myself.
I went to school in North Korea where I completed only elementary school before my mother and sister and I migrated to the South at the end of the Korean War. My father had died in 1945. In South Korea I completed junior high school, high school, and college.
When I was going to school my goal was to become a volunteer teacher and teach poor people especially about natural science. The quality of education in Korea, especially during the Japanese occupation, was very poor, particularly in the area of science.
My wish to become a science teacher conflicted with my mother's desire. She wanted me to inherit my father's mission and go to the seminary and become a minister. Until this time I had never gone against any of my mother's directions. But I did not want to become a minister, because during my father's lifetime he had sacrificed all his life to the service of the church, and when he died our family was very poor and there was no one to take care of us. For that reason I did not have much hope in a minister's life. While I was growing up, the Christians in Korea suffered very much. I came to see that a minister's life would be very lonely.
When I was going to high school in Pusan my sister joined the Unification Church. At that time many people in Korea had spread bad rumors about the church. After she joined my mother was upset, and so she decided to visit the Unification Church and snatch her daughter away, but instead she joined the church too. For this reason I was very worried about them. I was now the only member of the family left out and this hurt me very much. Although our family was poor, we had always lived peacefully and happily together. But because I was very unhappy with my mother and sister for joining the Unification Church, I decided to separate myself from them completely.
After two years, I decided I had to remove them from the church. So one Saturday in October 1954 I quietly went to visit the Unification Church center in Pusan where my mother and sister had joined, to observe them and their church life. But when I entered the center I quickly saw that the reality was very different from the rumors. I returned home and prayed all through the night asking God, "Heavenly Father, please give me an open mind," because I wanted to find out if the Unification Church was really good or bad. If it was bad, then certainly I had to remove my mother and sister from it. If it was good, I decided I would join the church along with my mother and sister. So I prayed all night, asking God for wisdom in making my final decision.
The next day I went back to the church center to attend Sunday service. It was held in a very humble building. At that time the Unification Church in Korea had only three small centers: this one in Pusan, another in Taegu, and the main center in Seoul. At the Pusan church that morning there were about 25 people attending the service.
Father
takes a Sunday walk through a historical park in Seoul, circa 1956.
The congregation sang the "Song of the Garden" over and over for about 30 minutes. During this singing a lot of spiritual phenomena took place. Some people started to speak in tongues, others shook all over, and some even jumped off the ground. There was a very Pentecostal atmosphere in the room. All of a sudden I received a very warm feeling all over my body. I was afraid of the members because I felt they were all so spiritually open they could see the spiritual dirt inside of me, so I could not bear to look up. I kept my head down all the time. The service lasted about three hours.
After the service my sister noticed a change in me, and she was overjoyed because her brother, who had been so negative, now appeared happy. She then enthusiastically introduced me to the congregation. The members all applauded for me. After that I was introduced to Rev. Moon.
Rev. Moon looked humble and dressed modestly. When I was introduced to him, he quickly shook my hand. He immediately recognized me, because the day before, as I was leaving the center, I had unknowingly walked past Rev. Moon. The street leading from the center was so narrow that as we walked past each other our hands knocked. Usually in Korea when this kind of thing happens, the younger person has to stop and humbly say he's sorry to the older person. But when we knocked our hands, although I turned to look, I simply walked on without apologizing. Until that day, I did not respect Unification Church members. I always thought of them as not being good people. So I just looked at the man and simply walked on without any apology to him. I did not even know he was actually Rev. Moon; I thought he was one of the regular members of the church. When I was introduced to him that Sunday, as he shook my hand he chastised me, saying, "Ah! So you are the young man who hit my hand and did not even apologize."
I had grown up without a father to discipline me. My father died when I was only eight years old and I had no elder brother. So nobody had taught me discipline from the position of a father. What amazed me and left a deep impression on me was that the very first time I met Rev. Moon he educated me about discipline. After this meeting I felt we had known each other for a long time, because through his teaching me discipline I felt like he was my father.
Afterwards, we had lunch. The house was so humble that there were no tables or chairs. We just laid newspapers on the floor. This was only a few years after the Korean War so people were still very poor. No credit was given because no one trusted anybody; everything had to be purchased with cash.
The atmosphere at the church, however, was very bright. It was really a family atmosphere. Although I was a stranger to them, we all enjoyed the meal together, centering on Rev. Moon and Mr. Eu, the first president of the Unification Church of Korea. The food itself was not so fancy, but we shared the meal with true love. This moved me so much. I had yearned to find this kind of atmosphere for a long time, and here I had found it.
At this point I had not yet heard the Principle, but because of this experience I felt the Unification Church was good. So I decided to stay.
During this time I was going to Seoul National University and I was also working as a private tutor to some children to make money for school. But I didn't go to my classes or to work; I just stayed to study the Principle.
Two weeks later I finished my first Principle seminar. Then I decided to sign membership. So instead of taking my mother and sister away from the church, I joined the Unification Church, too! On the first Sunday I had visited the church center, in fact, I had declared before the members that I wanted to join the church -- before I had even heard the Principle. To me, the atmosphere was most important. The Principle came second. The relationship among the members was what made the deepest impression on me.
Although every chapter of the Principle inspired me, what inspired me most was the Principle of Creation. "Man's portion of responsibility" has remained for me a magic phrase.
In 1954 there were fewer college students among the brothers than among the sisters. There was only one brother going to college -- I was the second male college student in the church then. But in early 1955 many more college students joined. During this time lots of spiritual phenomena occurred in our church. At prayer time everybody experienced the Holy Spirit. My body sometimes would vibrate and jump up. I wasn't used to this kind of spiritual experience, and I didn't like it very much.
My faith grew as time went by. About four months after I joined, our church went through difficult times, after Ehwa Women's University expelled a number of college students who chose to remain members of the Unification Church. We faced a lot of persecution from Korean society. Although I still did not know the Principle deeply, my faith grew stronger as we received more and more persecution. I felt happy inside, more peaceful internally.
With regards to my personal relationship with Father at that time, I felt he was a great teacher or prophet. In those days we did not use the word Messiah at all. We called him "great teacher."
A short time later, Father had to go to prison. We went to the prison every day and prayed for him in front of it. Then one member was allowed to go inside the prison to visit Father. We always waited outside for the member to come out and share about Father's situation and his message to us. He was released three months later. I was still going to college then, but I could not concentrate on my classes because I was always worrying about Father.
My mission in the church was keeping the center clean and teaching Sunday school for elementary and junior high school children. I established this Sunday school with some other people outside the church. I also took care of several high school students at our church, teaching them Principle and counseling them. Later on we started a youth association for college students and young men. I worked for this association with Rev. Ahn, who was its president. The youth association was similar to today's Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP).
True
Parents enjoy an outing on Chung Pyung Lake in the late 1960s.
I gained more understanding of the Principle step by step and developed a deeper and deeper relationship with Father. However, after a while 1 started to feel Father was so high and I was so low that I wanted to hide from him. This later started to develop into a feeling of a lack of love.
Until 1960 we related to Father as "Master" or "Teacher," but after the Holy Wedding of True Parents we started to refer to Father as "Father." Our great teacher now had a wife. Many members were so moved by this that they sometimes cried deeply because their happiness was too much to bear.
The members were excited then and bowed before Mother, addressing her as "True Mother." But for me, although I understood theoretically that she was True Mother, my feelings were different. I would try to cry like the others, but I felt empty and no tears came. I could not feel that Mother was my True Mother in my heart. So I struggled a lot inside myself.
After I graduated with a degree in physics in 1958, I went into military service as required by the government at that time. I came back to the church at the end of 1959 and attended my first 40- day workshop. The purpose of the 40-day workshop was to separate the participant from the satanic world. We had a very tight schedule. After the workshop I waited to receive a pioneering mission from Father, but he did not give me a new mission until after the Blessing of True Parents in 1960.
After the Blessing Father finally gave me a new mission to go to Cheong Ju church center to replace its leader, who was given another mission. As I was leaving for Cheong Ju I went to Father and bowed to him, but he just said to me, "Take care," without saying anything more. I thought that was rather cold; it was not satisfying to me. I also wanted to bow before Mother to thank her for my new mission, so I went to her room. When knocked on the door she opened it and I bowed and thanked her for the mission; then I bid her goodbye. But she immediately said to me, "Wait a moment," and she went back into the room. Now at this time, with my mouth I could call her Mother, but I didn't feel emotionally that she was in the position of my mother. I was still teaching the Principle to high school students, and Mother used to attend my lectures as one of the students. I saw her just as our teacher's wife.
After a short while Mother came back from the room with a newspaper and different kinds of fruits, nuts, and some special candies. I bowed to her again. Then she took the newspaper, painstakingly rolled it into a cone shape, and then carefully picked different fruits, nuts, and candies and put them into the newspaper cone. After she had finished, she offered the package to me and told me to share the contents with the brothers and sisters at the center where I was going. At that time Mother was pregnant and the members used to buy fruits or nuts and sometimes candies to bring to her. In Korea at that time food was very expensive, especially candies and nuts. So my heart was greatly moved by her generosity.
After receiving something from Mother, I felt, in tears, that she was just like my own mother. Before joining the church, whenever I left home after vacation to return to my dormitory at school, my mother would give me things to take back with me. When I held those things in my hands I felt my mother's love. Now through True Mother's generosity to me and my members, I could feel to the bone that she was Mother. When I arrived at the center we all shared the fruits, nuts, and candies. After this experience I changed and began to understand a parent's heart.
During the years that Father stayed in Korea, I continued to feel he was somewhat cold -- he was always so serious, urging us to bring victory in our missions, and disciplining us. Sometimes he would appear to be angry with us. Father is always in a public role. Whenever he expresses anger, it is a sort of public anger; he doesn't mean it personally. He is just dead serious about what must be accomplished in God's providence. He was always kind to me on a personal basis, but because I always felt I was not capable of fulfilling my mission well, I felt ashamed and afraid before him.
It wasn't until 1975, when Father invited me to visit the United States, that I really felt the abundant, overwhelming love of Father. One day he took me shopping and bought me a full set of clothes -- including underwear and shoes. Many of the things he selected for me personally. I felt it was too much. "You are giving me so much love; it's so intense, I have no room for any more!" But still he would pour out more and more love. I had never felt such love before, not even in my own family.
At first I thought this was all for me: "Oh, Father loves me a lot!" But then I saw that it wasn't for me alone. Father saw me not only as myself, but also as a representative of the Korean church members. Through his generosity to me, be wanted to send his love to all the Korean members. Father is always thinking this way.
Father and Mother want to take care of the members and give them their love, but parents are concerned about educating their children and guiding then to become people of fine character, in addition to giving them love. From an educational viewpoint, it is not always best to just shower children with generosity. Sometimes you have to be tough and serious, pushing them to do greater things. It is like this with our True Parents. Before they can impart to us the immense power of their love, we must have some foundation to receive it. This comes through education and a course of maturation. So for many years I saw almost exclusively the tough, disciplining side of Father. It was only much later that I could receive a soft, warm, abundantly embracing love from him.
We are called to love God with all our life, and our neighbors with the same intensity. In addition the Principle teaches us to love all the things of creation. Above all, we have to keep our faith and be obedient and righteous. The most important words for me are "obedience and righteousness."