These were all justifications I heared in UBF in real life.

“I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair.”

I say this with shame and regret. I played so many mental games to justify things that were unjustifiable.

OK, it wasn’t. But I had fun writing it.

Title: “Spare Not The Rod: Raising Disciples of Jesus Through Corporal Discipline”

Corporal discipline takes many forms. Beatings, Skokie training, boxing matches to choose conference messengers. All these things come from the Bible. God gave Israelites 40 years of Skokie training to bring them into promised land. Proverbs says that if we spare the rod, next generation becomes spoiled and useless. Apostle Paul loved boxing and beat his body many times. And when Israelite shepherds gave up marriage by faith and were cooked by foxy women, prophet Nehemiah trained them with beating and beard-pulling. Unfortunately this most effective part of ubf legacy is not being passed on to next generation and we must emphasize it along with the other core values. At this Peer Interest Group (PIG) session, we will hear beautiful heart-moving testimonies of how God used physical trainings to raise high-level spiritual marines in Korea, Germany and North America. Exemplary chapter directors will also share the secret of how to overcome satan’s attacks that may come from goodminded schoolteachers who notice bruises and liberal reporters who put slanderous writings in newspaper and internet.

At that time, I felt that the single most important psychological theme in UBF that needs to be examined is the Sisyphus Syndrome.

Simply put, this syndrome is the condition of people who do the same thing over and over again, legalistically and proudly claiming they are right. They see their failure, but refuse to make any adjustments, corrections or changes to have a different outcome. When things fall apart, they simply start all over again, doing the same things. This futile repetition is symbolized in Greek mythology in a king named Sisyphus, who was made to push a boulder up a hill, only to find that it keeps rolling back down the hill.

Exactly. Or as Einstein put it: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

In regard to training gc, yes I was trained to be a ubf-style messenger [which is not really a Korean style but uniquely ubf-style, I think even Koreans dislike this training]. But I failed at such training. I failed to be a “good messenger” in ubf for 24 years. Most years I was chosen to be a messenger, as if it was some sport to see who could finally break me and mold me into a ubf-style speaker. But it never happened. I lived with this dark cloud of failure year after year.

Now I realize how stupid such “training” is. Why mold people into one lame speaking style? Now that I am discovering my self, I can speak loudly, quietly, boldly, dynamically and for hours upon hours! I am free to speak my mind and speak as myself! And it is SO liberating!

Sure! But the stories become not so funny when Korean missionaries “train” Russians to say something in Korean style. That becomes ugly and unnatural. And what kind of message can it be if a Russian says something absolutly unnatural to Russian listeners?! I said it before that even when I went fishing some campus student asked me, “Are you a foreigner?” because I developed an accent.

After our leaving ubf a former “sheep” of my wife joined our Bible study. She spoke many “common sense” things but we enjoyed her pure Russian a lot.

So I am not against Koreans and will gladly be a good host, but what is not acceptable is the ubf directorship insisting they are justified to continue in their misunderstanding and refusal to be corrected.

As my dad used to say, making a mistake is not the problem. Refusing to correct your mistake is the problem.

That is another huge red flag. If you are always waiting for approval to say or do something, aren’t you really in a cult?

Btw, this page also says that James Kim is the official man for “communication and information”. Others probably don’t dare to write here becaus they don’t have an official blessing and mandate to do so. (With Wesley being a notable exception.)

Any way, does this mean these are the official ubf lawyers? Of course some of our Korean ubf friends could just tell us plainly and outright what the department of torture really is. Is this the legal team?

Here is the link to “the ubf department of torture”

I did some research and found this is really the “department of advisement” or something similar. But I’ve been curious as to why this old word would be used when it is not used (supposedly) by Koreans today.

As for the demon this and demon that I too got to hear a lot of that. Keep in mind my home chapter. But what replaced the demon this and that was secular humanism, secular humanism, SECULAR HUMANISM. (We get the point already!!)

So I just say yes! ditto! +1! and the classic Russian phrase: “oy!”

“He always brought his KJV Bible”

Bad idea! NEVER bring any translation to ubf except NIV. On second thought, what if everyone in ubf DID start to bring KJV, NKJV, NASB, ESV, etc bibles? I would just love to see the reaction if The Message was read by a presider on Sunday!

This is yet another good example of the wolf-like nature hidden behind the cute smiles of ubf missionaries. If you are loyal to the heritage they sincerely want to bless you. If you are not loyal to the heritage they sincerely want to dismiss you, silence you or damage your reputation in some way.

This is a major red flag that I missed. I remember as a single college student that two of my friends, on two different occasions, who suddenly disappeared one day. When I kept asking where they went, I found out they both had literally left in the middle of the night. One was living in his shepherd’s house, so he decided to pack his backpack and crawl out the window. The other packed his bags and left at night from the “brother’s house”.

Officially we were told these two friends of mine (David and Albert) were bitter, poisonous and wounded. At the time I just felt sorry that they couldn’t measure up to the “marine level” of Christianity like I was doing.

LOL Chris, I heard the same thing said in America many times, except we were singing “All Hail…”

And it took many years, probably over 10 years, with many meetings, many arguments and much consternation for our Sunday service to switch from 3:00 pm to 11:30 am. The arguments for 3:00 were like “Samuel Lee determined this is the best time” and “We must be in step with ubf all around the world” and even my favorite: “3:00 pm is the most holy time of the day. We must challenge the ciesta attitude in America.”

And yes, time zones don’t matter to chapter directors. Nor does geography. During one announcements our director declared: “We must help James Kim’s family in Houston! They are so cold so we need to get their coats from their house and ship them to Houston.” It was indeed winter, at least in Ohio. But I guess the hot weather in Texas even during winter didn’t matter– The Kim family needed to have coats!

I was so naive I just accepted this.

I fully agree. Joshua, I think that it would be very difficult to find a Bible passage with good and true ubf interpretation.

“family” in ubf however I think is close to “sin” and “idol”. John 4 has a dialogue of Jesus and the woman. Jesus said, “Go, call thy husband, and come hither”. ubf teaches that her main sin problem was her “family problem” and “the women’s cursed desire”. And this ubf interpretation goes a long way to teach ubfers that when you care about your family you sin and worship an idol.

I would suggest a small remake of the dialogue in John 4 for ubf sisters.

Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.

The ubf woman answered and said, I have no husband.

Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband:

For thou hast lived as if you hast had five husbands (“five crosses” of ubf activities) in ubf; and ubf whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

A few years ago I could give many examples, but these days I am forgetting things. Stress. All I can personally say, is many times in many places I objected to understanding and interpretation of Bible passages and verses, but could never speak up. In fact, where many churches discuss scripture to get a better understanding, we are trained not to. When we receive a Bible study we are always asked, “Do you have any questions?” But I feel that this has always been in appearance. When I did have a question it was not well answered. Instead a point was restated and that did not clear up my confusion. I will return to this after I have had time to refresh.

The more I tried to be a blessing to my Bible students by serving them and helping them and intruding into their lives, the more burdensome I was to them. Now that I have purposely stopped trying to be a blessing through my efforts-driven acts of shepherding, I find myself coming into contact with others and being mutually blessed through the encounter. Christ alive in me as I am in him works so that I can bless others. The harder I try by my own efforts to be a blessing to others, the more inevitably I become an onerous burden in their lives.

My comment is not specifically about Genesis 12. It’s about what happens when you question the prevailing UBF interpretation of any Bible passage.

A couple of years ago, I led a group study on Acts chapter 1 for some students at a UBF conference.

I told them that for over two decades, I had heard Acts 1:8 called “The world mission command,” and I had always assumed that it was a commandment for us to go and preach the gospel to all nations. Then I realized that the verse is not actually a command. Rather, it is a promise. The only command that Jesus gives to his disciples in that passage is to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit (verse 4). Then I said that, in my opinion, Jesus was not ordering the disciples to go and do anything just yet. He was telling them that, whatever they did in his name, they would need to be empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit.

After that Bible study, a missionary pulled me aside and said, “You should never say that UBF is wrong!”

Ironically, I had never directly mentioned UBF. I was only talking about some popular misconceptions and misunderstandings about that passage.

But the missionary was upset that I had “planted doubt” in these students, making them suspect that UBF’s interpretation of Bible passages might not always be 100% correct.

She then cancelled the Bible study that I was supposed to lead on the next passage (Acts chapter 2) the following day.

1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.

2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,
and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name.”

Even the NIV’s footnotes for verses 2 and 3 add some flex in how “being a blessing” can be read. But, hey UBFers, let’s sing it again for the millionth time, “ALL HAIL THE POWER OF…!”

Now if you ask a chapter director directly, they will deny everything. But every ubfer knows what I’m talking about. Perhaps the word “despise” is a bit too much. But we all know that ubf not only implies, but demands and requires you to place ubf mission above your parental family and your own family after marriage.

I was praised and flattered so much because I chose not to be with my dying father, quoting Luke 9:60 like some arrogant holy soldier in one Friday testimony.

Now I see that I was a fool. And like you Ben, I will fight tooth and nail if any ubfer tries to even talk to my children. Like you, my kids just have say who their dad is, and ubfers will back off, or at least they had better.

NRSV Jeremiah(NASB is similar) 7 – 22 For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.”

I recently came across this one and yes, it definitely changed the way I read the passage. In the NIV says “I did not just command them…”, the NRSV says “I did not command them…” The NRSV and the NASB repeatedly use the phrase “Obey my voice”, and the phrase “walk only in the way that I command you” but the NIV seems to emphasize obedience to the written code by saying “walk in obedience to all I have commanded you”. The tense is different and the tone changes a lot with use of the word “voice”.

In my recent studies of the Exodus narrative onward, it seems to me that God was much more interested in living intimate relationship with the Israelites from the start than I had realized. Maybe I’m reading too much into but I was definitely impacted by noticing this. Made me think of Teviah in the Fiddler on the Roof and all his intimate conversations with God, and the way the Israelites have studied the Torah as a kind of open ended conversation with God and each other.

This highlight an other glaring hole in my theology that I was taught by ubf. The teaching is that families are sinful distractions to mission, a danger to devotion, something God requires us to sacrifice, and a hindrance to God’s blessings.

This is utter fallacy no matter what version of the bible you use.

Clearly I was led to make mission (specificly the ubf mission) as my idol. So it is true that we should not make family an idol, but also neither should we make mission an idol. This is not the gospel that Jesus proclaimed, the gospel that overcomes restlessness or gives effervescent peace and joy and living hope.

At best, working so hard for a specific context of mission at the expense of family life yields a sense of accomplishment. But this is not the gospel. Some of this bad theology has been corrected in my mind by studying the gospel word “rest”, as I share on my other blog “odnim slovom”. I really think that discussions about the gospel are most helpful for ubfers. Why don’t they want to talk about the gospel? Do they think they already know the gospel fully? Or maybe they think it is a waste of time or just not related the massive ministry problems?

Unlike others who felt pressure to sacrifice their family for mission, I think I have always regarded my own family/kids as crucial and non-negotiable.

Even when some UBF leaders thought they should have “more authority” than I over my kids, I was crystal clear that I am the father, not you, not their Bible teacher(s) and not their UBF chapter director.

My sentiment was always that if you want to “train my kids” understand that I am still their dad, not you. This did not sit well with some UBF leader(s) who regarded me as “over-protective” of my kids.