By Julia Kim

2012

I just graduated from college and my parents and I were driving back to Michigan from Rhode Island. Lord willing, I would only be home for the summer. As long as I raised all the financial support I needed for the rest of the year to serve with a college ministry, I’d be back in Providence in no time. I felt hopeful. Though the process felt daunting, I felt a strong conviction that the Lord led me in the decision to intern with this campus ministry to reach out to international students; if he truly wanted me to do this, then he would make a way.

My parents were not as convinced. Throughout the car ride, they continued to tell me why. They would love to do what I wanted to do. It was all good work. Of course God could provide, but I wasn’t being realistic. The world was not that easy. Everybody worked hard to make a living, and there were so many causes. Why should people give to me? The list went on.

I fought back. Of course I didn’t have enough resources on my own, but God was big enough. He was the Creator of the universe, so he could provide whatever resources were necessary to accomplish his work. If people didn’t feel called to partner with me, that was okay. That just meant perhaps they had an opportunity to partner with someone else. We just needed to trust him and obey, and in faith, ask.

It was a long car ride home and a long summer.

2015

I was sitting in the car with my phone in hand and my father’s voice happily chatting in my ear. His tone shifted slightly.

“Geuraeseo…what are your plans for the upcoming year?” He asked.

It seemed like a benign question, but I felt my body begin to tense. My voice lowered and tightened.

“Well, I’m planning to stay in campus ministry for another year…”

“…” [long sigh]

Oh no, here we go. The back and forth was beginning again. I began to list all the reasons why.

He went through all the familiar reasons why I was being irresponsible and overly idealistic.

“Oh, so you’re going to beg for the rest of your life?!”

With all the passages of the Biblical support for support-raising running through my head, I yelled back:

“I’m not begging!”

I knew the familiar words that would come next. I’d heard them countless times over the years.

“You don’t listen.”

I was ready of course with the familiar retort. “No, you’re not listening.”

“Hangsang maleul an deul reo. Geunyang hagosipengeol da hae. You never listen. You just do whatever you want to do.”

The tears began to well up. Partially from sadness but mostly from anger. How could he have such little faith? Why did he have to think in such a worldly manner? Support-raising wasn’t easy for me either. Why did he have to make me feel like a beggar? Also, I was an adult. Why couldn’t he respect my decisions or ever support me after all this time?

2019

To a local congregation facing some strife over whether or not Christians should abide by Jewish food laws, Paul writes in Romans 14:17-19 (NASB):

For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

It’s clear from previous passages that Paul believes one group was more correct theologically. However, rather than simply take a side, he addresses the heart attitudes of each group toward the other – judgment and contempt – and exhorts each to love. Righteousness here seems not to be defined in terms of the correctness of one’s beliefs but in terms of a desire to please the Lord and the attitude towards and treatment of one another. Thus, more important than which group was correct was the consideration and love for one another.

When I think about all the arguments over the years with my parents and how I behaved or responded, I’m not proud. My parents and I shared the same blood, but we grew up in very different cultures and generations, leading to sometimes overlapping but often conflicting frameworks of values, beliefs, and understandings of the world. I was a child of the nineties born and raised in the U.S. by Korean parents. My parents were baby boomers who grew up in post-Korean War Korea and later immigrated to the U.S. I was so convinced that I was right and my parents were wrong based on my own framework that I never took the time to truly understand their thoughts from their framework. In doing so, I heard but I did not listen. Furthermore, in my impatience to be correct, I responded harshly. Regardless of whether or not their thoughts were correct or incorrect, I failed to be patient and kind and in essence failed to love as Christ commands. Likewise, perhaps my parents also were too quick to try to correct without really seeking to understand me, and in doing so, also failed to love.

What About You?

What’s your first reaction when you have a difficult situation at work, home or in the church? Or when you find that you have a significant disagreement? Do you run through the list of reasons why you are right or how you have been wronged either to be yourself or in a rant to a third party? If so, you, like me, may be approaching disagreement or interpersonal difficulty as a debate to be won. With this attitude, chances are you might find yourself in a position similar to mine in which a disagreement has become a conflict and the person or people you’ve disagreed with have become opponents.

There is an alternative. What if instead you approached disagreement or relational difficulty prayerfully with a desire to understand and see someone more clearly and love them more dearly? In doing so, you may find yourself gaining a taste of the kingdom – of righteousness and peace and joy in the Spirit. My hope is that you and I all would.

Julia Kim is a recent graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and an ESOL teacher. Originally from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, she moved to the East Coast about ten years ago for college and has been there ever since (minus one year overseas). Besides reading and writing, Julia enjoys photography, art, and music.