Ben, I enjoyed your sermon. It’s really good. I find it worth reading more than once, carefully looking up all the Bible quotations.  A theme that stands out is warning against “hierarchical leadership,” that is “the leadership style built on a chain-of-command social structure.” This warning can never be overstated. One of the main reasons I had hard time with my three sons growing up was that I exercised hierarchical leadership. Here is a Korean father, imbued with Confucianism, trying to raise three all-American boys. I only thank God for the relationship we have right now. It could have been much worse, even disastrous.

Believers or non-believers, the modern people must thank Jesus that heroes from the past, who were inspired by Jesus’ warning against hierarchical leadership, fought against tyrannical social structure throughout history. Non-believers must thank God for Jesus more than believers because they are more inclined to reject authority. It is irony that I have learned servant leadership in no other place than UBF, which many ubfriends accuse of hierarchical leadership. One of the messages that moved me most as I began Bible study in my college days was Mark Vucekovich’s  Niagara summer Bible conference message on John 13, Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet. As a young sheep I was so refreshed by the message that my experience could be described almost as shock. I did not even attend the conference because I was still in Korea. I was just reading his printed message. Here I am not trying to glorify UBF messages. It was just the word of God that touched me. But it is still valid claim that God uses, not only big name pastors or theologians, but even such a young messenger like Mark V, who was only in his early twenties, or even younger. (Obviously I am referring to your concern about ISBC.)

Sometimes I have some crooked thoughts and wish just a little bit of hierarchical leadership existed in Lehigh UBF. I am supposed to be the director. But I am actually close to being a janitor. If anything happens in the church, everybody assumes that Wesley will take care of the problem. The church back door breaks down quite frequently. Everybody assumes that Wesley will fix it. For remodeling work, people come in through the front door and linger a while and then go out through the backdoor. I call my directorship “janitorship.” (Of course I can work like a janitor, but act toward others like Kim Jong Il.) But who am I to complain? I thank God for everybody. Each is doing his or her best to serve God and build up the church. I haven’t seen anyone who works as hard as one American guy in our church. It is my constant struggle I work as much as he does, if not more.

Hierarchical leadership really doesn’t work. History proves it. Numerous tyrannical leaders in the position of power ruined countries and brought misery to people. The same is true with church as you described it so well. Is UBF more prone to hierarchical leadership than other churches? It’s very possible because many of us came from Confucius background. We have hard time being called by first name even by young children. I still call my friend Dr. Bill, not just Bill. Sometimes I grumble to myself because he calls me Wesley and I feel compelled to call him Dr. Bill. This is Mr. Confucius’ yoke that I must carry. Then what should we do? I guess we must keep learning from Jesus, take his warnings, read Ben’s message many times, and even memorize them. (This is also what Confucius’ teaching: Memorize great teachings and know them by heart.)

Now since I admit we from Confucius background are more prone to hierarchical leadership and we have been battered so much for that, I also want to say some benefits UBF people with Confucius background brought to Westerners, that are aligned with Biblical teachings. Predictably, one of them is acceptance of authority, which Koreans people find it easier than Americans do.

One of the most frequent phrases that ubfriends try to define ubf with is “authoritarian leadership.” (I always said why it is understandable.) And somewhat the phrase “hierarchical leadership” Ben used in his message seems to have similar meaning to authoritarian leadership. Now here is the monster we must watch out for–authoritarian leadership. On the other hand I think we must be very careful as we constantly give ourselves and others warning against authoritarian leadership. Here is why. Quite often the line between authority and authoritarianism becomes obscure, especially for those who are in the habit of resisting the Holy Spirit. People get in troubles, often very big troubles, when they confuse authority with authoritarianism. One good example is a group of rebellious Israelites in the wilderness, including Korah and Miriam—Moses’ own sister, who stood up against Moses. They of course accused him of authoritarianism. They said, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”(Num 16:3b)  We know the end result of their rebellion. Here we see Korah and his group did not say they opposed Moses’ authority that was given by God, but that Moses had gone too far beyond the authority God allowed him to have. Their downfall was they did not know where to draw the line between authority and authoritarianism.

Compared with the amount of warnings he gave against hierarchical leadership, Ben allowed only very small space, two and half lines, for disciplining people who sin in the church. If people like Korah and Miriam had been among the audience, they would have very easily failed to get proper warning. I am not sure if Ben is planning to give another great message to help such people. Maybe he is. People who are eager to blur the line between authority and authoritarianism may be as dangerous as people who exercise authoritarian leadership, if not more. Just look at the society these days. Where is it going? I don’t think I am wrong to say that the major problem of Westerners these days is to deny any and every authority. They deny authorities one by one, those of parents, teachers, churches, and so on. When Westerners abandon all the authorities including the authority of God, its end result will be more disastrous than for Asians because the latter have had at least Confucius for centuries.

When I give the example of Moses, I dare not compare lowly ubf shepherds with him. I am just giving example of danger of confusing authority with authoritarianism. If anything, I would compare the lowly ubf shepherds who are rarely trained in theology–humble nurses, school teachers…, to a donkey, to be specific Balaam’s donkey. But you’d better watch out and not oppose them when they speak to you with God-given authority. If God gave Balaam’s donkey authority to give his master his words, why not these humble ubf shepherds? And don’t be so eager to oppose a ubf director when he speaks to you just because you suspect he is exercising authoritarian leadership. He may be actually speaking to you through the Holy Spirit. It was a humble house wife who spoke to me through the Holy Spirit, which brought about my conversion. She actually said that I was possessed with unclean spirit using the Bible passage from Mark 1:21-28. But I accepted it, which opened my spiritual eyes to see myself not only as flesh and blood, but as a spiritual being, who was in desperate need of God. What if I opposed her, saying, “You little woman, how dare you?” My destiny would have not been too different from that of Korah, who the ground opened it’s mouth and swallowed.

My warning against confusing authority with authoritarianism does not lessen the importance of watching out for hierarchical leadership. I am just saying that there is the other side of the same coin.

Ben, putting aside your great sermon, which I have a lot to learn from, I must add I was greatly disappointed with your ascribing ubf church’s generosity of helping my wife in her sickness to Korean hospitality, even alluding to Korean Airline hospitality. It just doesn’t make sense. I am sure all those who came to visit us were often busy and had hundreds of other things to do. How do you think they found strength to overcome their busyness and tiredness to come and visit us with food? Do you think that they remembered their mothers’ or grandmothers’ example of practicing Korean hospitality and deny themselves to come and visit us? I wouldn’t be able to do it myself. Maybe for a few days, but not for eight months.

Anyway thank you for your effort to study the Bible and give great messages to God’s sheep in West Loop Church. Several photos of West Loop Church on Facebook are lively and show that the members are doing well.

Usually dreams are totally irrelevant of present realities. So we don’t put too much stock in them. But there are people who adhere to them. Joseph was one of them. His dreams were blessing and curse to him at the same time. They partly caused his brothers to hate him and sell him as a slave in Egypt. Trudging the desert road to Egypt in chain he might have blamed the dreams for his predicament. “Did my dreams lie to me and put me in this?” Months and years went by in Egypt and the role of his dreams changed. It was only his dreams that gave him strength and courage to go on with his life.

We sometimes find ourselves feel like giving up on everything being unable to cope with realities. But we force ourselves to move on often with the strength of dreams which look like nothing but lies. In that sense the value of dream can be very high. It can even move a nation to tears. I am thinking of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. One of UBF’s Genesis 39 questions is “Why did his brothers not have dreams unlike Joseph?” I am not going to tell you what I wrote in my answer notes. But the fact is we don’t all have dreams like Joseph or MLK. Hollywood took advantage of this and made tons of money by means of manufacturing pseudo dreams, by which I mean movies. I could almost call movie the curse on mankind in the modern time. (I am not only talking about pornographic movies, and pornographic videos flooding in Internet. Much more harm has been done.)

But I should relax a little bit and admit there is some good in movies. And that’s what movies do—help me relax and forget what went on all day in my working place. I don’t think it is only coincidence that the film “Gone with wind,” one of the greatest films that have been made, was made in 1939, during the era of Great Depression. It was made in an unprecedented spectacular style against the common sense that they should spend less money on such a frivolous thing as movie in time of poor economy. But it was so successful that it garnered box office revenue ten times greater than the cost of making the movie. In general movie industry flourished during Great Depression. Beside US one of the countries that make great movies is India. By the way Indian movie industry is popularly called Bollywood. Droves of Indians are drawn to movie theatres for the benefit of being able to forget their hard lives even for a short time. For those two hours or so they live in a fantasy world.

Here I must confess that I have recently created a fantasy world where I am living with a 26 year-old-beautiful woman. I have that woman’s picture in every room of my house I spend most time– my bedroom, living room, and a room I may call drawing room. Because of these photos of the beautiful woman I am much less attracted to scantly clothed women on movies or magazines. Some may have already guessed that woman on the picture is my wife. It was taken soon after our marriage. I am being almost absolutely honest when I say that the woman on that picture is prettier than any woman in the whole world even Hollywood. (My son once said his wife is the bestest in the whole wide world. He is right. And his mom on that picture is the mostest beautiful woman in the whole wide world. Some may say like father like son. That’s okay. My father was just like me too.) There are several other reasons that sometimes I lie to myself that I am living with a 26-year-old beautiful woman than overcoming temptation for lust. I hope that readers will be a little easy on me and not accuse me of seeing my wife only physically. She has far more beauties than physical one which I am not going to list here. One of the reasons I sometimes pretend I am living with a 26-year-old woman is my thanksgiving that God entrusted me with such a beautiful woman and my promise to Him and myself that I will cherish her just as I did on the day the picture was taken. But here you see I am playing trick on me and not being absolutely honest with myself. She is older than twice the age of her marriage. She is almost twice bigger than she was then. (Not quite there yet!) Nonetheless I give myself a pat on the back for my ability not to see things exactly as they are.

Our Lord Jesus, while teaching his disciples about faith, told them to believe that they had already received whatever they asked in prayer. (Mark 11:24). Note the tense of the verb. Is it called past perfect? It has something to do with the past–already done. The truth is that it was not done yet. According to Paul, God calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:17) I have noticed that some people get confused with realities and dream. They may do it on purpose sometimes and other times they may do it unwittingly. Those people must not become journalists. A demagogue misleads people by doing in on purpose. A person who has better qualities than a demagogue may do it on purpose to encourage himself and others.

While living on earth I can only dream of absolute honesty. But when time comes I will not only dream of it but possess it. My shameful past has been erased from everybody’s memory, including God’s and mine. I don’t have to struggle hours to muster courage to be truthful about my shameful past or wicked things that I am thinking because they just do not exist. Until then may God give me strength and courage and knowledge to be as close as possible to absolute honesty. I need good knowledge of myself to be absolutely honest. The fact that I don’t know some parts of myself deprives me of the ability to be absolutely honest. It is not good because I am lying albeit unwittingly. And what pity is it that I do not know who I am completely?  But this was revealed to Paul, which gives me hope of absolute honesty:

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

I dream of the day when absolute honesty is not a dream but a reality. On that day I will see others exactly as they are and myself exactly as I am. No less, no more, and no distortion. I will see Dr. Lee as he is. And I will find him being far more than what he was when he was telling us stories that some allege exaggerated and even distorted. I personally loved all his stories with some probable spins to them. Dr. Lee would not have made a great journalist. But I loved all his stories because he spoke like a dreamer. He spoke as if he had received what he prayed for and what he asked us to pray for. He spoke of things that were not as if they were.  I loved his stories because they pictured things to look sweeter than what I could see with my physical eyes. His stories gave me hope. They made me dream dreams. When he doctored a photo of a Bible conference to make the number of attendants look bigger, I would have tried to stop him if he was going to submit it to a newspaper editor.  But he was not. He was only dreaming and wanted us to dream with him.

While living on earth we need dreams. When time comes, our dreaming will not be necessary because what we see with our own eyes will be greater than anybody would have dreamed. If Dr. Lee’s stories had spins to them that I did not know about, on that day I will know the exact versions of the stories. Yet I will thank him for his stories with spins. I am sure many others will do too. His stories made us think that there was far more to our lives than met our eyes. He made us forget we did not have money to buy airplane tickets but believe that we could go to the ends of the earth with the gospel as if we were William Careys and Hudson Taylors of our time.

If I was trudging desert road in chains, I would love to have someone tell me dreams instead of my chains and the desert road. I think we need many dreamers in our time. Of course we need people who see things exactly as they are and speak of things exactly as they are. But we also need people who see things and speak of them as they should be and as they can be. I would call them dreamers. But there will be a time when we don’t need dreamers because what we see with our own eyes will be far greater than any dreamer’s wildest dreams. At that time I will see others and myself as face to face but will not be ashamed of what I see. It is the time God’s promise has been fulfilled that we will bear the image of our Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:49). There is nothing to hide but everything to be exposed. It will be such joy for me to be who I am. Until then may God help me to be as close to absolute honesty as humanly possible.