Abstract
Why have Korean Protestants been enthusiastic for Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, and Orthodox books in recent years? This article proposes that apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism, influential in both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, can help assuage the thirst of Korean Protestants exhausted by the excesses of positivity and the exploitation of self. I focus on the insatiable consuming passions of Korean Protestant religious consumerism as symptoms of the burnout society. I then explore the major contribution of apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism, which have much to teach contemporary Korean Protestantism.
Introduction
Though a swirl of vigorous external activity and anxious reactivity as an achievement-subject have been practiced in many Korean Protestant churches, some Protestant churches have been steadily expanding the existing boundaries of their spiritual practice to include desert asceticism, apophatic spirituality, Henry Nouwen, Thomas Merton, and so on. Especially among conservative evangelical Protestantism in Korea, which does not like to associate with the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, publishers have competitively published books in those subjects in recent years. Such a phenomenon should be seen as a resistance to liberate the restless and unsatisfied religious consumers familiar with the kataphatic tradition.
The purpose of this article is to expose the restlessness of the Protestant religious consumers who have lost their Christian Otherness in the Korean burnout society and to examine the phenomenon of the rising interest in apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism in Korean Protestantism as a means of resistance. First, this article analyzes the theory of Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society and identifies the way this phenomenon is also experienced by modern religious consumers, especially Korean Protestant Christians. Second, in order to resist and overcome the burnout society, this article explores Korean Protestants’ rising interest in the apophatic tradition and desert asceticism. Finally, this article articulates the significance of the practice of stability in order to implement apophatic desert spirituality among Korean Protestants.
The excessive positivity of the burnout society
Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han asserts that “every age has its signature afflictions,” explaining that the beginning of the twenty-first century is characterized by “neurotic” diseases such as depression, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome. They are not immunological negativities, but diseases caused by “excess of positivity” that derives from overproduction, overachievement, and over-communication.
Because they do not stem from an immunological negativity of otherness, the neurotic illnesses of the twenty-first century allow new forms of violence to emerge. They are immanent and permissive in the system itself. Neuronal violence is inherent in a system that has no enemies outside of humans; it inhabits “the negative-free space of the [s]ame, where no polarization between inside and outside, or proper and foreign, take place” (6). 1 Because it leads to psychic infarctions, not infectious diseases, neuronal violence as violence of excessive positivity “does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts” (7).
Han’s pathological analysis shows clearly the aspect of an achievement society in the era of neoliberalism beyond Foucault’s disciplinary society. The achievement society is a society of excessive positivity based on the “unlimited Can” as a positive modal verb that has moved away from the disciplinary society of negativity. The inhabitants who live in this society are no longer “obedience-subjects” but are now “achievement-subjects.” They are now “entrepreneurs” who have to manage themselves tirelessly (8).
Pointing out the fact that “prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation,” Han warns that if the negativity of the disciplinary society yields “madmen and criminals,” the positivity of the achievement society creates “depressives and losers” (9). To heighten productivity, the achievement-subject carries “a work camp inside.” “This labor camp,” Han describes, “is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator” (19). The achievement-subject endlessly exploits oneself. This makes exploitation voluntarily and possible even without domination or external constraints. Depression is the sickness of self-exploitation that suffers from excessive positivity. “The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible” (11). 2
The excess of positivity ends in hyperattention and eventually divisive tiredness. Han argues that in order to overcome the burnout society, we need a revitalization of the vita contemplativa.
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The neoliberalist imperative of growth means that things are produced and consumed with increasing speed. The compulsion towards the new shortens product life cycles. The furious pace that shortens intervals does not permit the consumer society any contemplation or lingering. Quoting Nietzsche’s words, Han warns of the danger of hyperactivity in human society where the contemplative elements are driven out: From lack of repose, our civilization is turning into a new barbarism. At no time have the active, that is to say the restless, counted for more. That is why one of the most necessary corrections to the character of mankind that have to be taken in hand is a considerable strengthening of the contemplative element in it.
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Korean Protestant religious consumers and “Canaan believers”
Han’s description of the burnout society applies to the symptoms of today’s consumer society in which consumers are perpetually dissatisfied with the excessive positivity of the free market. Consumerism is about the misuse of human freedom. Consumerism tries to find human identity through shopping. Humans constantly pursuing new products in the free market are “schooled in insatiability.” Though insatiability has existed since the fall of humanity, only in modern consumerism and neoliberalism do we find “the idealization and constant encouragement of insatiability—the deification of dissatisfaction.” 5
The force of consuming passions is never depleted. Consumers, though tired of this insatiability, are voluntarily accustomed to living to consume, not consuming to live. Even more seriously, consumerism suggests a preoccupation with the immediate gratification of desire. It implies foolishness, superficiality, and triviality, and the destruction of personal and social relationships through selfishness, individualism, possessiveness, and covetousness. 6 Consumers’ desire to continually move from one product to another enslaves them. Even without external constraints, individuals in the neoliberal era suffer from compulsions to maintain their identity through endless consumption. In a society where otherness has been lost, consumers seek difference by consuming new products or new brands, but the consumption is merely another practice of the sameness.
The delusion of the free market and consumerism does not promise freedom but voluntary bondage, infinite competition, depression, restlessness, and burnout. Historically, Korean society’s acceptance of modernization and neoliberalism in the short period after the turmoil of the Japanese colonization (1909–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), and the institutionalized oppression caused by the military dictatorship (1961–1992) accelerated the self-exploitive burnout society.
In particular, the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the subsequent intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was caused by a shortage of foreign funds in South Korea, brought about huge depression and frustration nationwide, as Koreans witnessed the powerlessness of their government, the collapse of several major conglomerates, and mass layoffs. Since the financial crisis, many Korean companies have shifted to an achievement-oriented culture, and the workplace is no longer a stable place and has created an environment in which it has to endlessly compete. 7
In the employment trend announced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2017, the annual average working time per Korean employee was 2,069 hours. This is not only above the OECD average (1,763 hours), but also the second highest working hours after Mexico (2,255 hours). Given that overtime hours on smartphone devices other than the officially set working hours are 11.3 hours per week, it is estimated that the average annual working time per person is about 2,656 hours per year and 10.8 hours per day. According to the results of the social survey released by the National Statistical Office in 2017, it was found that the percentage of people who regarded work as a priority (43.1%) was significantly higher than those who regarded family life as a priority (13.9%). 8
In this situation, the increase of neurotic diseases such as insomnia, panic disorder, and depression, which are the symptoms of the burnout society pointed out by Han, is a phenomenon that is prominent in Korean society today. According to the National Health Insurance Service, the number of patients who received hospital treatment for insomnia in the five years from 2012 to 2016 increased by 34 percent. 9 In the case of panic disorder, it increased by 50.4 percent in the same period. 10 It also shows that the incidence of depression in Korea increased 15.8 percent between 2012 and 2017. 11 Due to the negative perception of mental illness in Korean society, only about 15 percent of those suffering from depression utilize professional medical services. This is less than half the utilization rate in the USA (39.2%), Australia (34.9%), and New Zealand (38.9%), and it can be inferred that there are more depressive patients in Korean society. 12
The identification of such neurological diseases merely on a clinical and subjective condition is insufficient to explain why there has been a recent surge in neurotic patients. For example, depression is commonly thought of as spreading in our time like an epidemic. 13 Explaining this phenomenon, Anders Petersen claims particular social transformation, namely “the development of the contemporary demand for authentic self-realization,” is as important a factor as technological development such as the development of psychiatric thinking and the invention of antidepressants. 14 Like the obsession of the burnout society, which must be the performance-subject mentioned by Han, Petersen critically articulates that “the societal and institutionalized demand for authentic self-realization interrelates with the view of activity upon which the new spirit of capitalism is functionally and normatively dependent.” 15 This “new spirit of capitalism” emphasizes vertical integration, fuzzy organization, innovation, creativity, and permanent change. Under the circumstances, normative codes of the ideology activity such as mobility, flexibility, adaptability, as well as the ability to engage in a series of ongoing projects and tasks, are seen as essential to improving one’s employability, and hence vital attributes to enable the individual to maneuver within the complex world of the new spirit. 16
But individuals who want to prove themselves through continuing activity are at risk of exhausting themselves to the point of depression. Although not all suicides are caused by depression, the sudden increase in suicide rate in Korean society after the financial crisis in 2007 makes it impossible to ignore the correlation between the self-depleted individuals and the excess of activity and depression. 17 Korea’s suicide rate has been the highest among all the OECD member countries for the period spanning 2003 to 2013, and second highest next to Lithuania as of 2016. 18 As of 2016, 25.8 out of 100,000 South Koreans committed suicide. Contrary to patterns seen in other OECD countries, it has risen significantly in the last decade. Domestic suicide rates are more than twice the OECD average, with an average of about 14,000 suicides annually. 19
Today, Korean Protestantism experiences the burnout society equally with Korean society as a whole. Eugene Peterson criticized the pastors of North America as Augustinians in theory, but Pelagians in practice, which applies even more to Korean Protestant pastors. 20 In the context of Korean Protestantism, where quantitative church growth has reached a stagnation stage, pastors have more compulsion for “achievement” than ever before. 21 Korean Protestant pastors, as achievement-subjects, have constant pressure to create and maintain attractive churches with new programs and events to satisfy their fastidious religious consumers. To be seen as a church constantly providing a competitive religious commodity, they have been overworked and overstressed. In particular, Korean pastors who belong to the face-saving culture have been exposed to the temptation of vainglory, and they often have a narcissistic obsession with their external appearance. The more they fear exposing their true self to someone, the more they exploit themselves in ministry. Eventually, they end up getting exhausted and never reveal their true self to anyone—including themselves. 22
Korean Protestant laypersons also rely on a swirl of vigorous external activity and anxious reactivity as an achievement-subject. The identity of Protestants as religious consumers has put more value on the externally displayed products than on internally transformed values. The insatiable religious consumers who are restlessly chasing after more choices and options have no room for discipleship and loyalty. 23
Recently, the exodus from the local churches in South Korea, called the “Canaan believer” phenomenon, is a symptom of Korean Protestants’ fatigue, caused by the excess of positivity. 24 The “Canaan believers” are rebelling against the institutionalized church, similar to the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) group in the United States. The number has reached approximately one million people now, which corresponds to one-eighth of Korean Protestants. 25
In Korea, research on Canaan believers has only recently begun to gain attention in academia. Through a survey of 316 Canaan believers and in-depth interviews with 32 of them, sociologist of religion Chae-Yong Chong identifies who they are. 26 Unexpectedly, most of them were committed Christians in their local churches. Their rate of participation in church activities was more than 90 percent; the average length of church attendance was 14.2 years; and 70.7 percent never changed churches more than once. 27 The research reveals that these Canaan believers are the ones who have been serving their local church as core members, not the kind of church shoppers that quickly move from one church to the other. 28 Then why have they left their local churches? Summing up their answers, hyperattention to growth-oriented strategy, coercive authoritarianism, and hyperactivity without reflection are the main reasons they left their local churches. They feel that they have been treated like a consumable for their local church’s numerical growth. They are tired of keeping up with weekly church activities and ministries. 29 In short, the phenomenon of “Canaan believers” is a reaction against the burnout society Protestantism that has fallen into hyperproduction and hyperactivity. 30 The fact that most Canaan believers are in their thirties darkens the future of Korean Protestantism because they will be the core generation to lead the local churches in a decade.
The two catalysts that promote fatigue and burnout due to excess positivity in Korean Protestantism are prosperity theology and Tongsung prayer. 31 If prosperity theology is the foundation of the charmed theology that soothes the fatigued individuals who live in the self-exploitive achievement society, Tongsung prayer is a spiritual practice that habitually maximizes individual desires in a society of excess positivity.
For Christians who live in compulsion and anxiety to survive and protect themselves in their self-exploitive achievement society, prosperity theology conveys a perverted gospel that guarantees a sweet temporal blessing. Western prosperity theology influenced by Korean shamanistic culture has become more familiar to Korean Protestants and has become a useful theoretical device to cater to individual desires. It is not too exaggerated to claim that prosperity theology promotes quantitative church growth, material triumphalism, privatization of faith, achievement-oriented ministry, and religious consumerism in the Korean Protestant churches.
Tongsung prayer, a unique and special Korean Protestant form of prayer, is undoubtedly one of the spiritual practices that promoted the Korean church growth in a short period in Korean church history. However, a fatal weakness of Tongsung prayer, which easily ends with unilateral crying toward God, is that it can be a prayer containing only the one-sided passion, will, and desire of the person praying. In the current situation of self-exploitation, depression, and exhaustion with an excess of positivity, individual passion has to be controlled and purified through spiritual practices. However, the Korean church is more familiar with spiritual practice and worship—as expressed by the old Korean proverb “sincerity moves the mountain”—that unilaterally pours out one’s passion without rest.
Thirsty for apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism
Interest in Henry Nouwen, Thomas Merton, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, John Cassian, and medieval monasticism is steadily growing in the Korean Protestant church, which had been exclusive to the Roman Catholic as well as the Eastern Orthodox churches. Especially in the case of Henry Nouwen, 30 volumes of his 42 books were translated by Protestant publishers, and of his 17 books posthumously published between 2008 and 2013, 13 were also translated by Protestant publishers. 32 Among 15 critical biographies of Henri Nouwen that have been translated into Korean up until 2018, 13 were published by Protestant publishers. Since Protestant publishers have been competing with one another to translate Nouwen’s books, Catholic publishers have intermittently translated his books into Korean since the 1990s. Henri Nouwen has undeniably popularized the word “spirituality” in Korean Protestantism, along with Eugene Peterson and Richard Foster.
Meanwhile, Thomas Merton’s books, which are not relatively easy to read, have also been released by Protestant publishers, with a steady readership. 33 In addition to this, many essential books in the Eastern Orthodox tradition have also been translated by Korean Protestant publishers, for example, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Life of Anthony, John Cassian’s The Conference, The Institution, Evagrius’s Praktikos and Gnostikos, Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses, Pseudo-Dionysius’s Complete Works, John Climacus’s The Ladder of Divine Ascent, and The Cloud of Unknowing. It is noteworthy that the Korean Protestant church, which has a weak, if not antagonistic relationship with the Catholic Church as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church, publishes these books steadily. All these phenomena are due to the high demand of readership, which indirectly implies that Korean Protestantism has failed to quench the spiritual thirst of its believers through its tradition and practices. In this atmosphere, it is not strange to find Protestant pastors who confess Henry Nouwen or Thomas Merton as their literary or spiritual mentor.
We also see among Protestant leaders a growing interest in and reverence for words such as meditation, contemplation, and silence. Many Protestant seminaries and campus ministry groups frequently offer lectures or workshops on topics such as contemplative prayer, desert spirituality, Lectio Divina, the Jesus prayer, the prayer of examen, and centering prayer.
What is the cause of this phenomenon among Korean Protestants who are mostly conservative evangelicals and excluding toward the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches? With the heightened interest in Christian spirituality since the 1990s, various spiritual traditions and practices have been introduced to Korean Protestant churches, which is making the boundaries between Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy considerably thinner than in the past. However, more specific factors can be found in the apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism common in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, which have become options for the Korean Protestantism exhausted by the excesses of positivity and the exploitation of self.
Apophatic spirituality
Apophatic and kataphatic are two classic traditions of understanding God. Whereas Protestantism is frequently accused of kataphatic theology with excessive rationalism, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions have more grounds to include apophatic theology in their common epistemology. The apophatic way of knowing God takes the path of negation. God is not contained within the affirmations or analogies we can make of God. God is ineffable and inexpressible. Humans comprehend divine reality best “not by statements or names or images but rather by silent recognition that God is beyond.” 34 They can know God through the cloud of ignorance. The apophatic way is an experience of God in “thick darkness” (Exod 20:21) and “cloud” (Exod 24:15) as Moses experienced. 35
In his Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–ca. 395), who first developed a Christian apophatic theology, introduces three stages of knowing God as a paradigm of the soul’s journey from light to darkness. Moses first encounters God in the light of the burning bush (Exod 3), which is for beginners. But the light of knowledge is imperfect, and we need to move toward perfection through the “thick darkness” and “cloud” of two ascents to Sinai (Exod 19–20 and 33:23). For Gregory the essence of God surpasses any human conception: For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and the incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness.
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Apophatic spirituality, based on the fact that humans are limited and finite, helps one resist the temptation of self-divination. Apophatic spirituality helps to alert one to the temptation of authoritarian arrogance and aggressiveness. Apophatic spirituality invites humility and the place of attentive listening to God and others through self-emptying (kenosis) in the darkness of negation, not positivity. This calling of self-emptiness comes from the kenosis of Jesus Christ, who first showed his example of negation before us (Phil 2:5–11).
Korean Protestantism, fettered by the paradigm of perpetual performance and competition, needs to be attentive to the mystery of God beyond human reason. In the struggle for quantitative growth, Korean Protestant churches fill their worship services and prayer meetings with words of self-assertion and self-affirmation. There is little room for reflection; instead, there is a sense of compulsion that everything must be explained, filled, and controlled. For example, the absurdity of authoritative pastors who cannot be silent before someone’s unexplainable loss and pain, but rather hastily give a mechanical answer, or condemn someone, comes from the surplus of positivity that they must or can control and answer everything.
Apophatic spirituality becomes an alternative to the emptiness of postmodern society, which no longer trusts the absoluteness of words and reason. Pseudo-Dionysius emphasizes the fact that as our faith progresses, apophatic spirituality is more weighted than kataphatic spirituality. “The more we take light upward, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but speechless and unknowing.” 39
The apophatic spirituality developed into an understanding of self-emptying and a spirituality that embraces silence, such as with the Jesus prayer, Lectio Divina, and contemplative prayer. As Julian of Norwich describes, one experiences herself as “something small, no bigger than a hazelnut” through a silent prayer without lightness of words. 40 Apophatic silent prayer is like entering a “barren and waste desert, alone in the wilderness,” 41 where “the Lord is found waiting for his wounded servant with loving regard.” 42
Desert asceticism
Apophatic spirituality cannot be adequately understood without an appreciation of desert asceticism. The desert depicted by Julian might be metaphorical, but there were early desert fathers and mothers who practiced apophatic spirituality in the fourth century by physically withdrawing to the desert around Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The desert fathers and mothers especially highlighted hesychasm and apatheia as the essential spiritual practices in understanding God against a culture that tirelessly stimulates human desire and activity.
Hesychasm is a form of concentrated life that pursues the hesychia, a Greek word that means stillness and quietness. In a famous Apophthegma Patrum, “Saying of the Desert Fathers,” of Abba Arsenius, three levels of hesychia are indicated. When he prayed to God in the palace, Arsenius heard the voice saying to him, “Arsenius, flee from men and you will be saved.” “Having withdrawn to the solitary life,” Arsenius “made the same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, be still [hesychaze], for these are the source of sinlessness.’” 43
Hesychasm begins with an external hesychia such as seclusion or retreat from the world, interruption of external activity. After the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity and the Roman Empire began to favor the church, withdrawal to the desert meant a bloodless martyrdom movement that resisted the unfiltered environment of external activity and passion. However, the real purpose of Hesychasm is to reach inner hesychia, not simply abandonment of external activity. True Hesychasm is not made in the physical place of the desert, but in the journey inward to one’s own heart. There are stories in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers of people who can maintain hesychia in their busy lives as one can in the solitary desert. For instance, “It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city.” 44 Amma Syncletica warns that the criterion is not the external circumstances but the inner reality: “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the towns. You can be a solitary in your mind even when you live in the middle of a crowd. And you can be a solitary and still live in the middle of the crowd of your own thoughts.” 45
Individuals who are stimulated by external activity and passion live in a state of loss of true self. The desert fathers and mothers experienced themselves, through their lives in a remote desert, the solitary inner self, which is not overwhelmed by external stimuli, as being a core spiritual object that one must seek. The desert fathers and mothers constantly struggled for “radical honesty about the self” from the illusion and deception that humans experience in fear.
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The goal of the desert was utter transparency to divine light. Colomba Stewart relates the practice of radical honesty about the self to the understanding of human original sin. The tragedy of Adam and Eve was that they hid. Far from thinking of themselves as like God, they thought of God as themselves, and thinking God could not bear their failure, they hid. The desert fathers knew that one of the fundamental characteristics of fallen humanity is that we can keep things going by hiding and pretending.
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The practice of radical honesty and manifestation of thoughts to find their true selves was conceptualized as apatheia by Evagrius of Ponticus. 49 According to Evagrius, spiritual life has two stages: the life of ascetical practice (praktike) and of mystical knowledge (gnostike). Gnostike involves pure prayer and the contemplation through which one reaches gnosis, or knowledge of God. In his view, passions interfere with pure prayer. Just as a man in chains cannot run, “Nor can the mind that is enslaved to passion see the place of spiritual prayer.” 50 Praktike involves cleansing the soul of passions so as to bring about a state of apatheia, passionlessness or impassibility. 51 Evagrius calls apatheia “the flower of the ascetic life.” 52
For Evagrius, theology is a knowledge of God beyond the cognitive dimension. Theology is an ongoing fellowship with God, and so, he says in Chapters on Prayer, “If you are a theologian, you pray truly; if you pray truly, you are a theologian.” 53 For Evagrius, prayer is essential in understanding God, and it must be a ceaseless and pure prayer that does not get caught up in any incoming passions and thoughts. Prayer is not a medium to get something, but a goal for pure union with God. Apatheia is a preliminary task that must be done in order to do genuine prayer. In contrast, he describes prayer caught up in passion as follows: “the man who stores up injuries and resentments and yet fancies that he prays might as well draw water from a well and pour it into a cask that is full of holes” (22).
Regarding the fact that prayer is not about carrying private desires and will, Evagrius honestly confessed his own faults: Many times while I was at prayer, I would keep asking for what seemed good to me. I kept insisting on my own request, unreasonably putting pressure on the will of God. I simply would not leave it up to his Providence to arrange what he knew would turn out for my profit. (60)
A balanced prayer needs a room for a field of negation for human thoughts, passions, and activities. It is true that we can and must speak because God is the one who is revealed. But “the God to whom we pray is not only a God who we pray is not only Deus revelatus but also Deus absconditus, not only a God who self-reveals, but also a God who hides.” 54 The reason why Korean Protestantism was tamed only with Tongsung prayer instead of silent and contemplative prayers is not that such prayers are difficult to understand, but because these prayers do not rest on our ability. In that context, Korean Protestants must learn a desert prayer among many other prayer traditions in times of excessive positivity and hyperactivity by progressively detaching oneself from a multiplicity of disconnected and conflicting thoughts and passions. 55
The practice of stability
Korean Protestantism, experiencing self-exploitation and burnout due to the excess of positivity, has been gradually becoming more interested in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions based on apophatic spirituality and desert spirituality. However, for this interest not to fall into another consuming activity but rather continue to be a dynamic, persistent resistance to burnout society, the practice of stability should be considered.
The practice of stability is one of the essential practices for solid spiritual formation, but too-often forgotten by the Protestant tradition. The desert fathers and mothers in the fourth century have been the prototypes for strengthening the practice of stability. Learning to stay physically and internally where you are becomes one of the hardest lessons of the desert, more laborious than apparently stricter forms of asceticism.
Desert fathers and mothers were dedicated to the practice of stability in the extreme environment of the desert. The practice first focuses on staying in one’s cell, both internally and physically. When a brother came to Abba Moses and asked for his teachings, Abba Moses said, “Go sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” 56 They found that when apatheia was maintained by physical presence, they could attain profound meditation and prayer. Ultimately, such external stability leads the person not only to the conversion of external activities but also to the conversion of memories.
The practice of stability was maintained through strict rules of daily life. For example, in the sin of the acedia called “the demon of noon,” the desert fathers and mothers suffered from the temptation to leave their solitary or community. 57 It is the Rule of life and asceticism that guided them not to stumble. The Rule of life or asceticism is a practice with a clear goal of love (agape) for God and neighbors, which is not focused on abstinence itself but on correcting and regulating the passions and habits to not wander from place to place.
The practice of stability as desert asceticism is not a Pelagian practice that emphasizes only human action, but a process of revealing the weakness of human will and finding the actual need and position of God’s grace there. Ultimately, asceticism and grace go together in the sense that humans failing in ascetic practice move toward their ends in the grace of God.
In a mobile and active Korean society, the practice of stability may seem anachronistic. However, the true meaning of stability can be found in inner stability beyond external and physical stability. The asceticism of external stability is ultimately intended to be inward beyond bustling external activities. Finding the true self in God is one of the main goals of withdrawing to the desert. When humans do not find the true self in a changing world, they are just drifting in time. In particular, Korean Protestantism, exposed to face-saving culture and vainglory, needs to discipline its inner stability to find the true self in God beyond the false self fully packed with an excess of activity. 58
Stability can never be achieved alone. Stability embraces a given community, waiting for a community that has not yet matured and experiencing the presence of God already working in it. The Korean Protestants who live in constant restlessness due to the excess of positivity need the practice of stability communally as well as individually in order to achieve inner hesychia. It is not a place of glittering that gives immediate satisfaction and fulfillment, but a place to maximize the experience of unknowing such as in a barren desert.
Conclusion
Most Korean Protestant Christian life is lived kataphatically. The problem is not that kataphatic spirituality itself is harmful, but the danger of a kataphatic way in our modern consumerist and achievement society. The surplus of positivity overflows the lifeless language of our faith and drives it into self-exploiting uncontrollable activity. Korean Protestants who are painfully experiencing exploitation of self, as seen in the phenomenon of Canaan believers in the burnout society, need to be freed from the growth-oriented mindset and the constraint of maximizing achievement that relies on religious consumerism, prosperity theology, and Tongsung prayer.
As Henri Nouwen articulates it, “The strategy of the principalities and powers is to disconnect us, to cut us off from the memory of God.”
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Today, it is not hard to see how many tirelessly bustling actions and concerns hinder Korean Protestants, who are originally called to be living reminders of the divine presence in their lives. The Korean Protestant pastors clinging to a ministry to survive often forget that God is more interested in themselves than in their ministry and achievement. The authenticity of the spiritual journey depends on honest confrontation with the self. Such a spiritual journey leaves us vulnerable. As J. P. Williams concludes appropriately, however, confrontation of human vulnerability through apophatic spirituality and desert asceticism asserts strong resistance to the burnout society. The apophatic denial humbles us and leaves us vulnerable, certainly. At the same time, it can be a tool of resistance and subversion. With the author of The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross, we find ourselves drawn up by love of God into a critique of “religion.” While we recognize and honour the power and the beauty of the faith we have inherited, those of us called to practice the negative way refuse to turn tradition into an idol. We confess that our tradition is deeply implicated in injustice to God’s creation, and has at times betrayed and abandoned Jesus just as his first disciples did. We are called to be an Exodus people, leaving behind the land that for so long has been both our lifeline and our prison, straying through the wilderness, in order to find our home in God.
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