Posts tagged ‘North Korea’
The Dogs of North Korea
Credit: Korean Central News Agency
The more we learn about North Korea, the more sickening the regime there looks. Recently, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley held a meeting on human rights in North Korea, which featured Ji Hyeon-A, a woman who escaped from North Korea to South Korea in 2007. Fox News reported on her remarks:
“Pregnant women were forced into harsh labor all day,” she said. “At night, we heard pregnant mothers screaming and babies died without ever being able to see their mothers.”
North Korea does not allow for mixed-race babies, she said. At one detention center, she described how inmates starved to death. Their dead bodies, she said, were given to the guard dogs for food.
This is horrifying. But it is also tragically common in this isolated nation. So, how are we to respond?
First, we should pray for the protection of the citizens of North Korea. Living under the nation’s current dictator, Kim Jong-un, or its prior dictator, Kim Jong-il, as did Ji Hyeon-A, has to be terrifying emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and physically. Just this past week it was reported that North Korea’s top military official, Hwang Pyong-so, second only to Kim Jong-il himself, is suspected dead after falling out of favor with the supreme leader. In North Korea, there is no reasonable assurance of life. Thus, prayers for the thousands whose lives are in danger every day are in order. In Psalm 22, the Psalmist prays:
But You, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. (Psalm 22:19-20)
The Psalmist’s prayer echoes an all-too-literal North Korean fear. For those who face the grisly specter of being fed to dogs, we must pray. For those who are oppressed or threatened in any way in North Korea, we must pray.
But we must go further. Our prayers must include not only petitions for protection, but cries for justice. The evil of the North Korean regime must be stopped.
When John has a vision of heaven in Revelation, he sees both those saved by God’s grace and those condemned by God’s judgment. He explains the scene thusly:
Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Revelation 22:14-15)
John offers a laundry list of those who will be “outside” salvation on the Last Day. But what is most interesting about this list is who heads it: “the dogs.” Considering dogs are such a ubiquitous part of American families that they have garnered the moniker of “man’s best friend,” the idea that dogs would be excluded from God’s kingdom may puzzle us. But in the ancient world, dogs were considered to be not pets, but dangerous, disease-ridden scavengers. They were reviled. In his vision, then, John sees dogs as symbols of all that is evil.
Those who feed people who have died to literal dogs can only be called dogs themselves, in the biblical sense. Yet, we have the assurance that, one day, these dogs will find themselves on the “outside,” just like John foresees – whether this means they lose power in this age, or in the age to come.
In Psalm 22, shortly before the Psalmist prays that God would deliver him from the dogs, he declares:
Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. (Psalm 22:16)
This psalm, it turns out, is not only a prayer for deliverance, but a prophecy of things to come – a prophecy of One who, just like in the psalm, would be surrounded by His enemies and pierced for them (Psalm 22:16; Luke 24:39), a prophecy of One who, just like in the psalm, would die humiliated as His enemies divided His clothes and cast lots for them (Psalm 22:18; Matthew 27:35), and a prophecy of one who, just like in the psalm, would cry out in despair, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46)?
Jesus, just like the North Koreans, knew the horror of being surrounded by dogs while in the throes of death. Jesus, just like the North Koreans, experienced the most diabolical evils humans could perpetrate. But Jesus, while suffering death at the hands of evil, was not overcome by it. The dogs that surrounded Him were defeated when His tomb turned up empty. And the dogs that surround many in North Korea will be defeated when our tombs turn up empty too.
The dogs may maul. But Jesus’ resurrection is the promise of their defeat, and it is offered to all.
Kim Jong Un, Power, Politics, and Christ
Credit: Damir Sagolj / Reuters
Last week, when The Washington Post reported that North Korea had successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads that can fit inside the long-range missiles it has been so publicly and ostentatiously testing, the world snapped to attention. The U.N. Security Council had already voted unanimously the previous weekend to impose new economic sanctions on Pyongyang in response of North Korea’s launch of two intercontinental missiles. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt that continued provocation from North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is “intolerable, from the president’s perspective” and warned that the president is leaving “all options…and that includes the military option” on the table. President Trump himself declared that any further threats from the Kim regime would be met with “fire and fury.” Kim Jong Un responded to the president’s warning by threatening an attack against the U.S. territory of Guam. Tensions have crested dangerously.
As the world grapples with a dangerous and potentially deadly conflict, how do we, as Christians, process this battle of words between the United States and North Korea that could quickly degenerate into a battle of bombs? Here are a few thoughts.
Pray for a peaceful solution.
Jim Geraghty of National Review outlined three ways the U.S. can potentially respond to North Korea’s latest threats:
A) Learn to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea that can strike the United States with intercontinental ballistic missiles; B) a conventional war sooner to eliminate the threat, that will involve massive casualties on the Korean peninsula and possibly elsewhere; or C) a nuclear exchange with North Korea sometime in the future.
While U.S. officials weigh what Geraghty admittedly calls “three bad options,” Christians should be praying for an option beyond these options: peace. I have never been ashamed or afraid to pray what appear to be quixotic prayers. When someone is terminally ill, I still pray for healing – along with praying for comfort if an earthly healing doesn’t come. If a marriage seems inexorably headed toward divorce, I still pray for reconciliation – along with praying for each person’s best possible future if reconciliation does not come. In the case of this latest conflict between the United States and North Korea, I have no problem praying that God would bring peace – that weapons would be laid down and that threats would turn into productive talks – along with praying that our national leaders would be able to respond with other-worldly wisdom to Kim Jong Un if he continues in his menacing ways.
If God can bring peace between Himself and us through His Son, Jesus Christ, peace between nations cannot be dismissed as unrealistic or impossible. With God, even the impossible can be possible. So, let us pray for peace.
Don’t let the scope of the threat fool you.
Part of what makes this threat appear so ominous is its scope. The very word “nuclear” brings to mind visions of mushroom clouds, radiation fallout, and mass casualties. But the scope of destruction does not have be extensive to be egregious in God’s sight. Every murder that is committed, every lone wolf terrorist attack that is carried out, and every life that is lost angers God, for all of these things pervert the goodness of God’s creation by destroying the lives of God’s creatures. The destruction of life offends God deeply, even when it does not make headlines in the form of a nuclear missile. God is not just concerned with international crises. He is concerned with every single life – including yours.
Remember, Christ has triumphed over every rogue authority.
One of the fascinating features of North Korean culture is how it has deified the Kim regime. A North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park, admitted in a 2014 interview that she believed Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong-il, was a god who could read her thoughts. Of course, such deification of earthly leaders is nothing new. The first century Roman emperors fashioned a whole cultus around themselves. In Jesus’ day, Tiberius Caesar had coins minted with the inscription, “Tiberius Caesar, son of divine Augustus,” with the obverse side declaring Tiberius to be “the high priest.”[1] The early Christians rejected such deification of political leaders because they knew that Caesar was not Lord. Christ was. This is why the apostle Paul can write that Christ has “disarmed the powers and authorities [and has] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). There is only one God – and He is not in North Korea, the White House, or any other human seat of power. He is enthroned “in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19). Christ is the authority over every earthly authority.
Caution is certainly needed as we head into an uncertain future with North Korea. Fear, however, is not. Kim Jong Un may have nuclear weapons, but we have the sword of the Spirit. And the Spirit’s sword will continue to wield its power long after human weapons have been beaten into plowshares. For that, we can be thankful. And because of that, we can be hopeful.
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[1] See Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 325.
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