Kim Jong-Il = God

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-08-19 05:02pm

I was watching a National Geographic special on North Korea last night, and the narrator expressed confusion over the North Koreans' bizarre mix of fear, respect, and seemingly genuine adoration for Dear Leader.

At every conceivable turn, they worship Dear Leader, often with hands upraised to the sky. After a foreign surgeon was allowed to enter the country for 3 days to treat cataracts and restore sight to people blinded by them, the patients removed their bandages and upon seeing for the first time in years, promptly fell to their knees, raised their hands in the air, and thanked Dear Leader. Not the surgeon ... they thanked Dear Leader. People often had tears in their eyes when talking about Dear Leader.

The narrator sought to explain this by suggesting that perhaps in North Korea, the concepts of love and fear have been melded together in a way that we westerners cannot understand. But as I watched the video, it became painfully obvious to me: this is exactly the way Christianity looks to outsiders. The bizarre paradoxical superimposition of fear and love for an object of adulation which is said to be simultaneously wrathful and yet loving is something atheists cannot understand about Christians, yet how many Christians look at North Korea and think "what's wrong with those people?"

Rebecca said that when she watched the documentary, the connection between Kim Jong-Il and the Biblical God did not occur to her until I mentioned it. Then she said it became painfully clear that this is how Christianity must look to outsiders. Why do North Koreans worship a Living God and call him "loving" while simultaneously fearing his terrible wrath? Why do they thank him for the smallest good fortune, while not resenting him for the calamities and deprivations which he visits upon them? And why don't we as a society understand why they do that, when we do the same thing?

Christians and North Koreans also share the same fear of exposure to the outside world. Just as North Koreans are not allowed to see the outside world for fear that they will defect and never return, Christians seek to keep their kids from being "exposed" to harmful ideas or temptations for the very same reason: fear that they will leave the Christian world and never come back.

Anyway, this is just a brief chronicle of what went through my mind while watching that special. It gave me new insights into the minds of Christians.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2007-08-19 05:13pm

I suspect that with any "living god" theocracy you'd see much the same - wonder if that sort of thing occured in Ancient Egypt? Of course, they don't call Dear Leader "God" but it amounts to much the same thing.

Also has similarities to the dynamics in domestic abuse - love for the wrathful, punishing parent, etc.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-19 05:13pm

But Mike, obviously Christians are good people and radical Islamofascist thugocracy is a pressing threat to civilization. Why do you hate Jesus while he loves you?

This is precisely how Christians think. And the idea that Abrahamic religion does not necessarily have political analogues that make it dangerous is retarded. They even call it "the Kingdom of Heaven." Their idea of paradise is literally being locked in a church with Jesus all day, praising him and nothing else, while people are being burned and tortured alive outside for the rest of eternity. Sounds great.

starfury · Post by **starfury** » 2007-08-19 05:18pm

The narrator sought to explain this by suggesting that perhaps in North Korea, the concepts of love and fear have been melded together in a way that we westerners cannot understand. But as I watched the video, it became painfully obvious to me: this is exactly the way Christianity looks to outsiders. The bizarre paradoxical superimposition of fear and love for an object of adulation which is said to be simultaneously wrathful and yet loving is something atheists cannot understand about Christians, yet how many Christians look at North Korea and think "what's wrong with those people?"

This was what really gets to me, they can easily condemm it when it was done by others, Yet there is such a huge refusal to think the same thing about Christian Right, The more Fanatical Ones were always so quick to call for death of the evil infidels etc, but will never admit it being the exact same thing as those islamic Fundamatists.

Phillip Hone · Post by **Phillip Hone** » 2007-08-19 05:53pm

Christianity is also very similar to the government described in 1984.

Doublethink: In 1984, the government demands that people hold contradicting beliefs when it would suit their goals. For example, the people who edit the records are supposed to think that they were always that way, even though they're the ones who edited them. In Christianity, followers are expected to believe that if the pope contradicts a previous pope, they're still both infallible.

Thoughtcrime: In 1984, merely saying bad things about the government in your sleep is enough to get you tortured and eventually killed. In Christianity, God can torture you for eternity simply for not believing in him. In both cases, simply thinking the wrong way is a crime punishable by torture.

Sexcrime: In 1984, the government is against sex except for raising children. I don't think I need to say anything about Christianity here.

"Big Brother is watching you": In 1984 and in Christianity, the population is constantly being watched, either through telescreens or through God.

People from the far right talk about how Stalinist regimes replace God with a man, but they don't realized just how right they are.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2007-08-19 06:31pm

In a sense, treating Kimmy with this mixture of love and fear is almost
more rational than what Christians ascribe to Jesus. Their leader is a real person; Jesus is more akin to a child's imaginary friend.

AK-047 · Post by **AK-047** » 2007-08-19 06:44pm

I wonder what will become of N. Korea's people when Kim Jong-Il dies. Christians wont have the problem of God dying, but Kim is a mortal, his time will come eventually.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2007-08-19 06:58pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:But Mike, obviously Christians are good people and radical Islamofascist thugocracy is a pressing threat to civilization. Why do you hate Jesus while he loves you?

This is precisely how Christians think. And the idea that Abrahamic religion does not necessarily have political analogues that make it dangerous is retarded. They even call it "the Kingdom of Heaven." Their idea of paradise is literally being locked in a church with Jesus all day, praising him and nothing else, while people are being burned and tortured alive outside for the rest of eternity. Sounds great.

I think it would be inaccurate to presume that the idea of heaven is the same for all Christians. It's not like the denominations can agree on anything else, I don't know why heaven would be any different.

TithonusSyndrome · Post by **TithonusSyndrome** » 2007-08-19 08:54pm

I believe Christopher Hitchens made the same observation some time ago, and considers it a point of deep regret that he couldn't describe the state of North Korea to what he felt would be a point satisfactory enough to give the reader the impression of North Korea that he himself got while there.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2007-08-19 09:15pm

I've said that before also (though probably not on here), and the mandatory nature of all the indoctrination and participation will be similar in intensely religious cultish areas. The Phelps gang, for instance, they all get similarly mixed up with their fear of the end times and the hatred for others and the jubilation over the suffering of the enemies of God.

Their home life separate from that is pretty mundane, they could be any other family, but when they start going through the OCD-like motions and rituals, you get very similar mindsets as those in North Korea among the faithful.

I think that perhaps the documentary maker and most sufficiently secular christians in the west don't understand it is that the NK state's police forces are very immanently real, whereas we all have the unstated subconscious acknowledgement that God doesn't really want to destroy us right now and natural disasters are not acts of God, though we consider lucky people to be miracles. Most people understand that God doesn't strike people dead when they dare God to, but Kim Jong Il's regime? There's probably even more parallels with the muslim world and african christian fundamentalists, due to the extra oppression and willingness to apply holy law.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2007-08-19 11:48pm

Basically, the North Korean population under 'Lil Kim is rather like the abused wife who's been beaten down so often both physically and mentally as to be reduced to an abjectly infantile state.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2007-08-20 12:51am

The demand on and threats against people the likes of Kim Jong make are essentially the same as most deities as well; namely 'do everything I say and tell me how great I am all the time or I'll make you suffer'.

Strangely most people think it deeply immoral for people to do that but commendable for deities (or atleast their deity) to act in exactly the same manner, I could never really get my head round why.

mr friendly guy · Post by **mr friendly guy** » 2007-08-20 05:38am

Plekhanov wrote:
Strangely most people think it deeply immoral for people to do that but commendable for deities (or atleast their deity) to act in exactly the same manner, I could never really get my head round why.

Because to these people morality isn't a set of values based on objective harm or benefit. Morality doesn't come from rational values, but from their deity, so anything he says goes.

This mind set was demonstrated clearly to me in medical school, during ethics when the lecturer posted a question which I believe was originally from Aristotle and I paraphrase - is God moral because he does good things, or are good things moral because God does them. The former states that morality is independent of God, while the latter states that it is dependent on God, hence even if God behaved contradictory it would still be moral. In other words, anything goes is moral as long as God does it.

To my mind the two options are clearly different, but several Christians could not wrap their minds around it. Literally they saw the two options as the same. Fucking madness.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2007-08-20 08:23am

Plekhanov wrote:The demand on and threats against people the likes of Kim Jong make are essentially the same as most deities as well; namely 'do everything I say and tell me how great I am all the time or I'll make you suffer'.

Strangely most people think it deeply immoral for people to do that but commendable for deities (or atleast their deity) to act in exactly the same manner, I could never really get my head round why.

The Godsquad on SB subscribe to this nonsense. They say that if God exists he is the ultimate moral arbiter and can do no wrong, therefore anything apparently evil he does must be moral at the end of the day. Mith has this argument that it's preferable for God to kill babies because that way they will go straight to heaven, instead of turn out bad, which they invariably would if they were in a non-israelite tribe. All in all, it's just a load of question begging on their part; they reject the definitions of human morality in favour of immature authority-driven morality that is merely the whim of an invisible authority, with no outside means of determining whether that entity's whims are genuinely good or not.

A more watered down variant of this is that God is utilitarian and ethical, and we just don't know what he knows, so all these evil indiscretions might turn out to be for the greater good at the end of the day. Like... allowing children to be raped and killed. Of course, it's just appealing to ignorance, any objectivity on the matter reveals God is no less reprehensible than humanity's greatest monsters.

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2007-08-20 01:13pm

AK-047 wrote:I wonder what will become of N. Korea's people when Kim Jong-Il dies. Christians wont have the problem of God dying, but Kim is a mortal, his time will come eventually.

He'll probably have installed his son as a successor, or handpicked someone. Things will likely continue as they have been already.

That said, KJ-I's son(herinafter lil' Kim) has shown himself to be more engrossed in western culture than KJ-I; he faked a passport to try and get into Japan to go to Tokyo Disney. KJ-I is just an insane movie buff.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-08-20 03:55pm

Howedar wrote:I think it would be inaccurate to presume that the idea of heaven is the same for all Christians. It's not like the denominations can agree on anything else, I don't know why heaven would be any different.

I was raised and educated within Catholicism. Sure they don't explicitly say anything, but reading between the lines its obvious there's no sex, partying, or competitive sports in Jesus' Gated Community. You're not going to be immersed in orgiastic pleasure - that's sinful. So what then? You're supposed to bask in the everlasting love and communion with Jesus. Sounds exactly what church - and especially the Eucharist in Catholicism - is supposed to be for true Christians. And that's supposed to make you feel better if your wife, brother, mother, or child is being tortured in the Hell literally outside or below for failing the belief test.

You may argue that you feel that its different, but we're talking about official ideologies here, and the Catechism could easily be construed as demonstrating my view.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-08-20 04:11pm

Christians are always quick to point out that not all denominations are the same, but there's the face they present to the outside world and there's the one they show in church. The one they show in church almost always says that the Flood is either a real historical event or a wonderful morality tale. Either way, it demonstrates the Kim Jong-Il worship mentality.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2007-08-20 07:17pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:[You may argue that you feel that its different, but we're talking about official ideologies here, and the Catechism could easily be construed as demonstrating my view.

Boy, that's a smashing endorsement. If it's a matter of how the Catechism can be "construed", then you've conceded the argument before it begins. Even the most monolithic of the Christian faiths has no explicit definition.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2007-08-21 01:45am

Patrick Degan wrote:Basically, the North Korean population under 'Lil Kim is rather like the abused wife who's been beaten down so often both physically and mentally as to be reduced to an abjectly infantile state.

I forget where but I remember someone once referring to it as basically Stockholm Syndrome on a national level.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2007-08-21 02:11am

I know everything is relative, but the North Koreans have a pretty low standard when it comes to their god. Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2007-08-21 09:45am

Superman wrote:I know everything is relative, but the North Koreans have a pretty low standard when it comes to their god. Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?

In fairness to the North Koreans their god does score much higher on the 'undoubtedly exists and is quite capable of making terrible things happen to me' scale than most rival deities.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2007-08-21 10:49am

Mongoose wrote:In Christianity, followers are expected to believe that if the pope contradicts a previous pope, they're still both infallible.

Actually, the Catholics aren't expected to believe that. The Church actually works hard to avoid that. The Pope is only meant to be inerrant when he makes a special kind of decree called 'Ex Cathedra' (from the throne {of Peter}).

I'll use a deliberately silly and deaming example; if you've seen Stargate SG1's latest couple of seasons, it's like when the 'Ori' in that speak through their space pope. The rest of the time, the Pope is just chief priest, when he makes this Ex Cathedra prononcement, the Holy Spirit will intervene and make everything he says into the truth. The only difference between that and Catholic teaching, is that when the Pope speaks Ex Cathedra, his eyes don't glow and his voice is less cool.

The Pope has only ever done this twice, in two declarations - the first, 'Ineffabilis Deus' is that Jesus was created without any dirty fucking involved, by the will of god, and the second, 'Munificentissimus Deus' is that Mary was immediately taken into heaven upon her death, her body physically lifted up, rather than having to wait until the 'end of time' like everyone else.

A wider definition has various other declaraions as 'Ex Cathedra.' Needless to say, there's 'Theologians' who squabble incessantly through their whole lives about the exact number. But there's no more than twenty of those, that I'm aware of. And most of them are 'Condemming Filthy Proddie/Other Splitters' in some form or other. This is because the Conservative Catholics retroactively want to define these things as 'infalliable' in order to counter the 'inevitable slippery slope into moral relativism'

Just to add even more inanity to it, it's the whole church that's infalliable - various ecumenical councils are considered 'Dogma' and inerrant, too. They excommunicate you for refusing to believe in these things. There's been twenty one such councils.

Then there's the 'general teaching of the church' which is best descibred as 'somewhat falliable.' They change these according to their 'importance to the faith' and how they fit with secular understanding and so on. The key phrase here is "Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith."

This isn't the fun kind of submission, involving chains and rope and blindfolds and feathers and other kink, but the kind that gives Islam it's name. The kind where you just accept the Dear Leader's will. Once the Bishops settle into an issue, it's 'Doctrine' or 'Dogma' (Dogma's more important, and is supposedly infalliable) and that means the peans have to do the core message of religion, and obey.

The whole thing is spun out of the Catholic (and to a lesser degree, orthodox) belief that there's three things that define their faith. Scripture, Tradition, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit supposedly supports the other two, which tell of it, in providing inerrant teaching. This is the essential difference between Catholics and most protestant fundamentalists.

Catholics believe the Teachings of the Church to be perfect, and that only by 'communion with Rome' can you get the right picture, wheras Protestants (as a general rule) believe the Scriptures Themselves to be perfect. Which, while it produces something more acessible than the nuances and weirdness and "corruption" of Rome, it means that Protestants are unable to change the minor accoutrements of their faith the way Catholics do. Catholics can adapt the little things - age of the earth, nature of creation, orientation of the solar system - to match up with science. This is why they're not creationist (or at least, not YEC) wheras many hardcore (or even less so) Protestants are - very little is infalliable for Catholics. The whole text is meant to be the inerrant word of god for many Protestants.

Superman wrote:I know everything is relative, but the North Koreans have a pretty low standard when it comes to their god. Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?

See my current sig. It doesn't matter how stupid they look when they have life and death power over you.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2007-08-21 12:32pm

NecronLord wrote:
Superman wrote:I know everything is relative, but the North Koreans have a pretty low standard when it comes to their god. Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?
See my current sig. It doesn't matter how stupid they look when they have life and death power over you.

True; I was mostly poking fun at him. He was imposed on them, afterall.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-08-21 12:52pm

Superman wrote:Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?

Well . . . .Shinto followers apparently worship erect phalluses. . . .

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-08-21 12:59pm

Superman wrote:I know everything is relative, but the North Koreans have a pretty low standard when it comes to their god. Can you really get any lower than a flat-top sporting oompa-loompa with a big beer gut?

I don't know ... how about an illiterate hippie? That's who Christians worship.