Dr. Sam Lamerson

Often I have heard the statement “He (or she) is not a ‘real’ Christian.” What then is real Christianity? What is it that shows our true love for Christ and his Kingdom?
I am working on a new class for this coming semester which will deal with the book of James in English (that is that one does not have to read Greek to attend the class). It seems to me that James tells us what is “real Christianity” in the first chapter of his letter. He says

James 1:26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

I was reminded of this passage lately because my son, Josiah, is getting ready to leave home for several months. He will be working for an organization that does exactly what James is speaking of, helps orphans. I am really proud of both of my children and the way that they have decided to do kingdom work. Charity is now a social worker (having just graduated with a degree in social work) and Josiah is now working to help children who cannot help themselves.

If you would like to know more about what Josiah is doing, and maybe even help out a little, check out his blog at http://brosiah.blogspot.com/2009/06/so.html I think that you will see why I am so proud.

Real Christianity does something. James is clear about that. So let us all not just sit here, but do something for the kingdom!

For the Lamb,

SamLam

Eating the “Korean Beef”

Posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

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Well, it has been exactly two weeks (not counting the time change) since I ate the strangest meal of my life so I guess it is time to write about it.
After teaching on Wednesday and then being driven to a church that was about an hour and a half out of Seoul, we preached. We (Charity, Josiah, and I) were accompanied by my interpreter Professor Kim, Dr. Sohn the president of RTS Korea, and “Old Cho” the father of my former student Sung Cho. “Old Cho” was like a grandfather to the kids, wanting to make sure that they ate well and telling us that the reason he was in such good shape at 72 was because he ate so much sugar. We finished dinner, preaching and then a snack after the sermon, not to mention the ice cream (without beans) that we had on the way to the church. I just don’t know how they all stay so skinny. After all of that we made it back to the hotel. I was really feeling the exhaustion by that point and just fell into the bed like a whipped puppy. Here is a picture of Dr. Cho at the dog eating place.

The next day I taught again in the morning but by this time I had abandoned my lesson plans. I didn’t feel like my teaching on Bible study methods was really getting through to the students so I asked them, through my fantastic interpreter, Professor Kim (a true genius and a great scholar as well as the kindest host that I could imagine). I was told that they would like to hear some American sermons so I would do a sermon, answer questions about the exegesis, preparation, and delivery, and they try to tie it in to the lessons that I was teaching about the methods of Bible study. It seemed as if I was beginning to communicate a little so I was glad to have made the change.
Time for lunch came on Thursday and I had been promised that we would be taken out to a special restaurant that serves dog. There are a couple of things that are important. First, they all wanted me to make sure that I alerted everyone to the fact that they do not eat pet dogs. The dog that they eat is raised for food, much like a pig or a cow would be. Second, the restaurants’ that serve dog are few, and very low key. We went down an alley and into a sort of hall to get to the place and there was not a westerner nor a scrap of English to be found.
The pot of meat came to the table where it was kept hot by a heating element. The pot was filled with some sort of greens with strips of meat on top. This was the “Korean Beef” that we had heard so much about. I got my chopsticks ready (there were never forks on the table) and put a little of the meat on some rice, dipped it into a sauce that had been mixed for me by Dr. Sohn and took my first bite of dog. I have to tell you that it was a case of mind over matter. I could not think about the fact that I was eating dog while I was chewing.

The meat was a little fatty and greasy. When I asked for a knife to cut off the fat I was brought a pair of scissors. It was certainly not the worst meal that I have ever had, but I can’t say that I like dog or would ever want to eat it again. It was an experience, and our clothes smelled like dog for the rest of the day. Just a little reminder of what had happened. I let Mo smell the shirt when we came home and he seemed quite puzzled by the scent coming from that article of clothing. Here is Professor Kim pointing at the dog.

The next morning was my last class and after giving them a final sermon, complete with the story of Lonnie the bus driver and his “I’ll see you at the party” line, I told them that I would see them all at the party; the great feast where we will no longer be separated by language, race, or color but will all be sitting down at the supper of the Christ as members of the Kingdom.
After I finished, the students gave me wonderful gifts. The first was a box of beautiful handkerchiefs that were silk and will add a wonderful touch of class to my suit or a magic trick needing a handkerchief. One student gave me a beautiful dress shirt, asking me if I wore size 100. I told him I thought so, not knowing what else to say, and amazingly the shirt fits very well. Professor Kim gave me an RTS Korea memory stick in addition to the RTS Korea book stand (the nicest book stand that I have, and I am have a lot of book stands) that he had given me earlier in the week.
We took pictures of the class, hugged our goodbyes and I genuinely felt the love of Christ in that room. A wonderful thing was to realize that no matter where one is in the world, the symbol of the cross (which can be seen all over Seoul) brings together the members of the kingdom. I loved those men, even though I could not communicate directly with them and I pray that the Lord will use their work greatly for them.

I was finished teaching for the week, so the kids and I took the subway (very clean, safe and easy to use) to an area where there were many tourists and lots of things for sale. I did find out that during the rush hour there is a professional “pusher” to get the people into the cars. His job is to push people into the car until there is absolutely no more room. We rode during off hours so it was not so crowded, though if we were fortunate enough to get a seat, we noticed that the locals would move away from us whenever they could. We were told that there was much fear of the “swine flu” from Americans and this may have been the reason.
The tourist area had all kinds of things for sale. I bought a hanging painting of a tiger and a rabbit smoking a pipe together. I don’t know why, but I just thought “where else are you going to get a hanging painting of a tiger and a rabbit smoking a pipe.” We saw a demonstration of Korean candy making from honey and nuts. The candy was actually very good.
To give you an idea of how kind the general person was, I walked up to a stand looking for water. The stand only sold some kind of honey juice which I didn’t want. I saw some water in the refrigerator behind the juice dispenser, and thinking that the owner didn’t understand what I wanted I pointed to the water. She took out the bottle (I realized at that point that it was her personal water) and poured me a cupful, then refused when I offered her money. I wonder how many American street vendors would do that for a person who could not even speak the language.
I took a taxi back to the hotel (taxi service was very inexpensive, a thirty minute ride for six dollars) and slept, still feeling like I had never really gotten the time change worked out. I’ll write about visiting the market on Saturday, and the trip home in the next few days.

Korea Days Two, Three, and Four

Posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

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Korea Days 2 and 3

First of all let me apologize for taking so long to get these up. A fourteen hour time difference takes a while to get used to, and when you have gone for nine days and then come back you get just enough adjustment to the Korean time before you leave to come back to EST.
On Monday morning I tried to sleep in, attempting to get on Korean time. I was picked up for lunch by my van driver and my translator, the most wonderful Professor Kim, who is finishing his dissertation at the University of Chicago. Kim was not only our guide, translator, friend, but also our protector for the week, making sure that we were not forced to engage in any Korean meals or customs that we were not comfortable with.
I was taken for lunch, along with Charity and Josiah, to a special “buffet” in downtown Seoul. My host was my former student and friend Sung Cho (called “little Cho” to differentiate him from his father “Old Cho”). This was a truly cosmopolitan experience. Walking around the restaurant, I saw squid, eel, duck, seeweed, cookies, ice cream (without the beans, thankfully), and many many types of raw seafood.
I braved the squid, eel, seeweed (not good) but mostly ate the duck with Korean bread and sauce and filled up on cookies and ice cream. The squid area had not only tenticles, but also the entire squid body that one could take if you were a real squid lover.
After lunch we moved hotels because I thought that the AC in the first hotel was not working. The second hotel was in the middle of the city. At this hotel we could walk down the street to the McDonalds as well as many street vendors (all illegal I later found out). The McDonalds was a saving grace. I can’t remember the last time that I ate a Big Mac and enjoyed it so much.
I began my class in the afternoon, meeting my students and trying to find out what level they were at and what I could teach that would be helpful to them. I began with teaching a 12 step process to use when preparing a message. I find teaching through an interpreter (I think this is a better word than translator) very draining. It is difficult to stop every sentence or so and wait for the translation. It makes it very difficult to get any rhythm going, and almost impossible to use any humor.
I taught for three or four hours and went home exhausted to the second hotel. It was just as hot in there as when I left. It was then that I came to realize that the Korean law calls for no thermostat to be set below 80 degrees in a public building. It was a very hot week!
Tuesday morning I was back for more teaching and made an attempt to download a Korean Bible from Logos so that the students could see the Korean translation as I spoke about the text. Unfortunately I was unable to make the download work so they were forced to look at the English, which was as helpful as me looking at the Korean. Tuesday afternoon I went home and slept because of a headache, caused I was told, by the time difference.
Wednesday was a very busy day. I taught all day and then we picked up Charity and Josiah for a trip to a church outside of Seoul. After about an hour and a half van ride, we arrived at the church and were taken to a traditional Korean dinner. We took our shoes off at the door, sat on the floor, and immediately the food started coming. As you can see by the pictures, the food just kept coming and coming and coming. I have never seen so much food in my life. Just when we thought that the mean was over, there would be another set of dishes brought out. At the end there were over 40 dishes on the table. Here are a couple of pictures from this restaurant.

Here I am sitting on the floor with the other pastors: Old Cho, myself, Dr. Sohn, and the host pastor

Here are the 40 dishes from the meal

Here is a particularly tasty dish.

I must commend both Charity and Josiah (who were the best traveling companions ever) because they ate whatever we had, no matter what it looked like or tasted like. We did our best to fit in and eat like locals.

After the meal (I didn’t each much because it was a lot of raw fish), we went to the church. I preached (very hot in the church but only Charity, Josiah and I seemed to notice it). I never know how much good I am doing or how the message is coming across so preaching in a different language is quite a challenge.
After the service, we go back to the pastor’s office where there is more food for us. We were then given a book by the pastor (in Korean, I reciprocated with a couple of DVDs from Coral Ridge Ministries that feature me on the Historical Jesus) and an envelope with cash. The churches are very gracious and generous to visiting speakers.
That was about it for Wednesday. I’ll leave Thursday for tomorrow, since that was the day we went to the dog restaurant.

For the Lamb,
DSL

A Report on Korea-Day One

Posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

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KOREA DAY ONE

I had been asked to teach and preach in Korea by Reformed Theological Seminary of Seoul, with whom Knox enjoys a partnership. I was to go to Korea for eight or nine days and teach a class, speak to local churches, and meet the professors from our sister school. We arrived in Korea on Saturday night after leaving W. Palm at seven A.M. on Friday. The flight from Atlanta to Inchon airport (about an hour from Seoul) was fourteen hours straight. That is the longest flight that I have ever taken.
Upon arriving, before Charity, Josiah, and I could get out of the airport a passport was misplaced by one of us (who shall remain nameless). By the time we realized it, we were a train ride away from the area where the passport had been laid down on a bench a forgotten (not that hard to do when you have been on the road for over 25 hours). A Korean policeman, complete with gun, was not happy to have three Americans standing around looking through their luggage for a lost passport. The passport had been left lying on a bench at the last stop of the train. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to get back on the train. After some serious attempts to communicate, and English speaking helper was called, others were sent to the bench and the passport was given back to us. A breath of a sigh of relief and a reminder that the passport had to be guided more carefully than money.
We were picked up by my friend and translator, Professor Kim from RTS Korea where I would be teaching. Kim speaks perfect English and was a wonderful host and tour guide during the week. The seminary driver took us to our hotel room where we were given a half an hour to shower before being taken out to dinner by our hosts.
The bath/shower in this particular hotel was very different. To start with it was made for someone the size of Frodo Baggins. You can see the picture below, with Josiah sitting in the tub. Notice that there is no shower curtain.

At supper we ordered and began to see that the size portions in Korea are very different from those in the US. I was not very hungry, because of being so tired, so I only had a bowl of soup. The rest ordered some sort of cooked beef. When the plate came, I thought that it would be for the whole table to share. Turns out that this was just Charity’s portion. People eat in Korea, yet none of them seem to be overweight. I don’t know if this is because of the type of food they eat, the fact that they walk a great deal more, or just good genetics. Whatever it was, I was constantly amazed at how much food was served. At this dinner we were joined by Dr. Sohn, the president of the seminary and Dr. Cho (called “Old Cho” to distinguish him from his son “little Cho”). Considering that it was four o’clock in the morning US time, we did pretty well eating supper.

The next morning I started realizing that the AC did not seem to be working. We opened the windows and put a fan on so things were not quite so bad. We took a walk to a small family mart store and bought a few snacks, including dried squid, Korean soda, and some local cookies and chips.
In a couple of hours we were picked up for my first official duty. I was to preach at a large Korean church (through my interpreter of course). The message seemed to go OK; though speaking through an interpreter is very, very difficult. It is impossible to get any kind of a rhythm of speech going, and none of my humor translated which left me at a decided disadvantage.

An interesting thing about preaching was that as one steps onto the preaching platform, you take your shoes off. This is a reminder that the preacher stands on “holy ground” as he delivers the word of God. There are slippers to wear, as there are in many places. The picture below shows the slippers in the hotel room.

After church we went on a tour of the church which had several tall buildings with rooms used for prayer, youth group, a cafeteria, and even a driving range cage (golf is very big in Korea for the upper level economic people). All of these things were free to church members.
After the tour of the church we sat down in a small, excusive “restaurant” where we ate lunch. After traveling and preaching, I was not very hungry but ate a little. It was then that I had my first experience with “Old Cho” telling me that I needed to each much more. Cho also has an interesting philosophy about eating sugar. He puts about ten spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee, not to mention sugar on virtually everything else he eats. He believes that “sugar makes you live longer.” It seems to be working for him. He is over 70 years old and in great health.
After the meal, we were offered some special “Korean Ice Cream.” I thought, “finally something that I can really enjoy.” When the ice cream came, it looked really good. It was ice chips with whipped cream, some sort of ice cream type substance and lots of fruit. I took my first bite and tasted something unusual. Black beans. Yes black beans in the ice cream. Needless to say, I ate what I could without eating any of the black beans, but it was not what we think of as ice cream.

After lunch we were taken back to the pastor’s office, who was a graduate of Knox’s Korean D.Min program. He proudly showed us a photo of him receiving his diploma from Dr. Kennedy (who is loved and revered among evangelicals in Korea). We were given a gift of some very, very nice Korean skin soap as well as an exceptionally gracious honorarium. Here is a picture of all of us after the service. Charity, Josiah and I are in the front, just in case you can’t tell.

After church, we learned that we would be taken to “Lotte World” the premier Korean amusement park. The only strange thing was that we were going straight there in what my mother would call our “Sunday go-to-meetin” clothes. So we walked around Lotte world, a sort of scaled down Disney world, in our good clothes. One of the funniest moments was the list of rules for one ride. Look carefully at the rules toward the bottom and see if you spot what might be some sort of a mis-translation.

Here is a picture of us at Lotte World. Does it remind you of anything?

Finally at about four in the morning our time we had seen enough. Our host, the ever gracious and kind Professor Kim, allowed us to get a cab back to the hotel which took about an hour or so and cost less than twenty dollars US.
We all slept like the dead until about three o’clock in the morning when we woke up and had trouble going back to sleep. The fact that the AC did not seem to be working may have had something to do with this. Professor Kim spoke to the desk about the AC but to no avail and so we decided to move to a hotel that was in downtown Seoul for better AC. More about that move and the AC in Korea tomorrow.

That is the end of day one, day two coming soon. Don’t miss the stories of the many strange things that we ate (including dog) and experienced the rest of the week.

Glad to be back in the USA,
DSL

Back in the USA

Posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 1:26 am

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Well, it is almost three o’clock in the morning, but two o’clock in the afternoon in Korea so the jet lag takes its toll on me here. I will write up a lot more about the trip in the next couple of days, complete with photos, etc., but for now, I am glad to be back in the US where I can set the AC for as cool as I would like it, and have ice-cream without black beans in it (another unusual Korean dish).
I’ll let you know how dog tasted, how the preaching was, and how I loved being there and teaching at RTS Korea. Thanks for all of the prayers, they were a wonderful help.

More Tomorrow (or whatever, I am not quite straightend out on my days yet)

DSL

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