Saewolho Salvage
It was a great human effort. The two barge ships lifted up Saewolho sunken down to the bottom of the sea bed by the power of multiple winches turning to pull wire ropes in balance. Koreans hired foreign technology and equipment to get this thing done. Almost all Koreans have witnessed a great performance of the human engineering over time not missing a moment. I do not know what they want to learn from the scene. A TV caster ran the show as if a feast. But I doubt it was a feast. It showed the depravity of human soul. The salvage cost must be huge. I had a feeling that we are missing something big. We might waste money and national energy without realizing them. The salvage expense, tax payers’ money, paid to the foreign nation is probably much more than the cost of building in the country a new ship comparable to Saewolho. But the incident of Saewolho includes not only material loss but also human loss, suffering, emotion, and blame game. It was the reminder of the cowardly behavior of the captain, the immoral business practice of the ship owner, safety absent passengers. Where was God, when it occurred, not saving those innocent high school kids dying in the sinking ship? Does God help certain kind of people only? Does God hate Koreans? There is no answer to these and other numerous questions. God may not exist. But men blame God when something terrible happens.
You might have read a best seller novel called “Shack” published several years ago and now is on movie. This is a story of a happy young man with beautiful wife and one boy and two daughters. On a family vacation, the sweet youngest daughter is abducted in the absence of their attention. Emergency call 911 did not bring her back. Everyone involved was sad and then had guilty feeling looming out of not paying attention to the little helpless darling. If each one had little more careful eyes on her, the little girl would be here. The family went into despair. Finally the man asked God. Why are you so cruel to me? Why do you give my little child so much trouble? What did she do wrong to You? I have been a Christian all my life. Is this a gift to me in return? Now I know you don’t exist. Christianity is for ignorant and cowardly people, not for me. I don’t even like my wife, my son, and my daughter. They care about themselves only. They are egotists. They ignored the poor helpless little kid. My home is a hell. He cried.
Saewoolho victim families might have accused God for not doing anything to save their innocent little kids. My real question is: do you really blame God for the Saewolho accident? Then, do you want God to be the captain of the ship, ship navigator, ship engineer, ship owner, passenger safety counter, freight weight account balancer, sea waves calmer, and a caretaker of our every detailed activities? So do we want to be mere robots operated by God’s finger tips? Don’t be ridiculous. God created to give us free will so as to do things freely at our own risk. The accident was directly or indirectly caused by our greed, carelessness, irresponsibility, and ignorance. Is it anything to do with ex-president’s Botox operation? I don’t think so. Is it easier for you to blame the ex-president than God? God is too fearful to blame and ex-president is a weakly woman. We are used to blame others for anything gone wrong. In fact, God does not deserve blame. Blame game is not good for an individual as well as a nation. Blame game is to deceive ourselves and to get out of hidden guilty feeling. Man does not like to be blamed. Man does not want responsibility. So blame game is the name of the game in play every day. Blame game is a sin. We are sinful.
The young man who has lost his daughter finally realized that God is blameless. The abduction is evil and was a human work. Then who made his home a hell? Why did they end up hating each other after the loss of their child? He found that they were blaming each other unconsciously. Each person was thinking it was somebody else’s fault but could not escape from the guilt. Blaming other without reason is indeed a sin. The sin took happiness out of the family. In Christian terms, he was a servant to sin. Every member was sinner. God made him realize his sin by His Grace. God is justice. He wants to make us all saved from sin. Soon believing in God, when he chose to be free from sin, happiness came back again. A happy ending story! A theologian wrote a book on a theology of Shack after the novel. This book must be a serious book for religious people. I am not a theologian, but only a lay Christian. I hope this is not too far from the teaching.
Now when we realized that Saewolho accident is our fault come from our sins, why did victims’ families put up tents on Kwanhwamoon street and blamed the Government, not to mention blaming God? And shrewd politicians have not missed an opportunity to use them for instigating political riots. This is a terrible injustice to God and also to peace loving Korean people throughout the country. We recognize their suffering. We have sympathy toward them and will help them placate their agony and recover material loss. But putting up tents on the busy street trying to block citizen’s everyday life is not justified. But how have Koreans come to accept such injustice as justice? Korea has become a nation of injustice. What am I wrong? What say you?
