“Modernity is the age of cinema. With the popularization of OTT (Over the Top) service, you can now watch movies in your room. Netflix launched a Korean drama and topped the world’s top box office, and latecomers Apple TV and Disney+ are competing for home theaters. Films are deeply embedded in our lives today and occupy our time. It is necessary to understand the properties of the film medium and to understand the message behind it. Because watching movies blind dominates our thoughts and values.
Kim Yang-hyeon (51, author of ‘The World Seen Through Movies’ (NCD Media Korea))the picture below) I met the cooperative pastor of Jeju Sarang Church on the 20th of last month at a hotel in Jeju City. Pastor Kim communicated closely with the next generation based on film, the overwhelming medium of our time, and recorded it in a book. He’s a Christian with a movie in one hand and a book in the other.
In 2004, Pastor Kim was appointed pastor of Peniel Girls’ High School belonging to the Korean Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church) Goshin and taught religious subjects. After thinking about “how to effectively preach the gospel to teenagers who often doze off in class,” I chose the movie. I watched a scene from the last movie with my students and critiqued it from a Christian perspective. Pastor Kim lectured on film at Trees and Forests, an alternative Christian school in Jeju, until recently. After Busan CBS, he took turns such as “Howl’s Dad’s Movie Story” in Jeju CBS, presenting more than 500 films for 12 years. He watched Jojo movies once a week, taking Monday mornings when the pastors were away, and paid particular attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which teens adore.
“We spoke with young people at a church retreat about ‘The Eternals’, performed by Ma Dong-seok as Gilgamesh. It’s a ‘meta-story’, an epic genre that transcends stories Eternal extraterrestrials appear in Mesopotamia, where human civilization began 7000 BC, and they appear as those who built the Babylonian culture in the ancient Middle East, ancient India, and Aztec civilizations. shows a restored scene from the Hanging Garden of King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible.Postmodernism had dismantled everything up to the middle or late 20th century and treated it like little stories, but the world is once again paying attention to the great epic in reaction to this. The Bible is also a great epic, as interpreted by theologians such as Tom Wright and Craig Bartholomew. Of course, there is a crucial difference with Marvel’s worldview.
According to ‘The Bible is Drama’ (IVP), co-authored by Barthélemy and Michael Gohin, the Bible is the first act of creation, the second act of the Fall, the third act of the Old Testament, the fourth act of the coming of Jesus Christ, from the disciples to us. It consists of the current 5th act, where the mission of the church takes place, and the 6th act, the climax of the book of Revelation. It is a worldview that views the entire Bible as the great drama of salvation and the epic of God.
Marvel, who creates the modern mythos, borrows this epic structure from the Bible through the Eternals, but shows a decisive difference in the treatment of humans. Heroism, which has appeared many times in Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Panther, etc., i.e. superheroes complaining that humans are insignificant beings , troublesome and troublesome and how long do we have to help them, and , in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the superman appeared is a structure that However, the Bible emphasizes that each of us is a life created with dignity in the image of God. The Bible reminds us that the secularized American dream that only 1% of superhuman heroes are enlightened and the rest are just losers is a huge hoax.
In order to communicate with the next generation through movies, you need to read in-depth books. Professor Eung-kyo Kim of Sookmyung Women’s University, poet and author of “Cinema Epiphany” (Saemoulgyeol Plus), said in his recommendation for Pastor Kim’s book, “You must have the ability to converge and criticize detailed information such as aesthetics, character psychology and religion and background story. I can write a movie review,” he said, adding, “Pastor Kim sees a movie from the point of view of a parresiastes who delivers the truth, that is to say someone who says everything he thinks.”
Pastor Kim leads the “Dialogue of Science and Theology” reading group in Jeju. Its members include pastors such as the Presbyterian Church and Yejanggosin, university professors, CEOs of tourism companies and representatives of independent bookstores. We read a book a month and meet to give presentations, ask questions and discuss. We read “Quarks, Chaos, Christianity” (Via) by quantum physicist and priest John Paul Kinghorn, and talked about discovering God’s providence and free will to a point that cannot be explained by science. Through “Challenges in the Age of Climate Crisis and the Church’s Response” (Saemoul Plus), we discussed the role of Christians in a time when human survival is threatened.
Pastor Kim said, “Marvel keeps creating villains like Thanos Debianz, but the Bible tells us to embrace our enemies instead of hating them.” He said.
Jeju = reporter Woo Seong-gyu [email protected]
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