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Friday, August 19, 2011

What I'm Reading: Surviving Terror - Hope and Justice in a World of Violence

I've just finished reading a book that has sat on my shelves for some time: Surviving Terror: Hope and Justice in a world of Violence.  It is a  collection of essays and sermons inspired by the life and work of  Korean theologian David Kwang-sun Suh.

And the more I read, the more I realized I need to read.  In describing his life's journey David Suh made me realize that I know little about the history of Korea (and most of what I know is, shamefully, based on episodes of M*A*S*H).  I know nothing about  Minjung theology or the minjung movement.  I know little about the repressive regimes that ruled South Korea (the "good" Korea) after the Korean War.  I know little of the history of Christianity in Japan.  I know little of the racial tensions between the Japanese and Koreans.  I know little of the fundamentalist character of much of Korean Christianity or of its painful similarities  to Confucianism.

But the writers who contributed to this book have something to show me.Spanish priests who objected to the brutalities and inhumanities perpetrated against the native Caribbeans by those who followed after Columbus, victims of  the sexual politics of terror in patriarchal communities, survivors of the Nazi holocaust confronting their fears... these are the stories and the voices within this collection.  

I know something more of the world now, but not enough by any means.  I want to know more.

But this one thing I know of myself - I've not known terror.  Not in the way they have.
I've experienced fear.  I've had moments of panic.  But nothing in my relatively comfortable life has come close to the terrors described in this book - terrors which are, sadly, the norm for many parts of the world.

The book is disturbing in many ways, but challenging, too.   There is no surrender to terror in these pages.  Instead there is a confrontation with those forces, and a call to action, even if the action is small -to write, to speak, to share something of the good news of the gospel and the vision of God's peaceable kingdom.  


I should have read this book sooner.

Surviving Terror: Hope and Justice in a world of Violence 
edited by Victoria Lee Erickson and Michelle Lim Jones
Brazos Press,  2002.

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