On November 6th this year, Makerere University Kampala hosted a Mind Education Seminar by Dr Ock Soo Park, ‘for all academic and non-academic staff.’ The seminar followed a ‘Mind Education Lecture’ on September 11th, 2019, to the staff and students of Psychology at the same institution. This lecture was by Dr Kim Kisung, “the Main Character in the Korean Movie, ‘A Big Shot’.”
Efforts towards Mind Education stem from a 2016 Memorandum of understanding between Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports and the International Youth Fellowship (IYF). Dr Ock Soo Park established IYF ‘as a worldwide youth organization and international NGO based on Christian mindset in 2001.’ IYF is registered in Uganda as a Non-Governmental Organization seeking to affect ‘many lives of people through Mindset Change and Mind Recreation.’
The Korean Park had earlier founded the Good News Mission (GNM) which, outwardly, self-identifies as gospel-oriented and missional. This ministry’s official European website states that GNM ‘preaches the Gospel through Bible seminars, winter and summer retreats, and student camps in Korea and abroad.’ The website lists mind education as one of the means through which GNM ‘develops youth and young leaders.’
To this apparent end, IYF conducts Mind Education seminars in secondary and tertiary institutions and other institutions such as Luzira Prison, Makerere University, and Village of Hope, among others.
The Seminar’s Loud Silences
To the listener of the November 6th’s seminar, ‘Mind Education’ was a recurring theme. What was conspicuously absent, however, is the definition of the phrase. For some reason, Dr Park and his associates did not define ‘Mind Education’, leaving it to the listener to fill in the gaps. This lack of definition is the first loud silence, one that reeks relativism.
Nothing better exemplifies the above than the picture presented by one of the facilitators. The image displayed was of an obscurely drawn rabbit-duck. If you have ever seen two people arguing about a figure of a six/nine in the sand, you get what I mean. The moral of the story, so said the first speaker, was that reality depends on how you look at it. The picture may be of a duck or a rabbit. One’s standpoint relatively determines what the image is. The speaker, of course, conveniently eliminated the author’s viewpoint. Undoubtedly, the painter had something in mind, a rabbit, or a duck, or both. And only they can accurately disclose what they drew.
But this first loud relativistic silence points to and stems from the second. We remember that GNM and IYF self-identify as Christian with the mission to preach the gospel.
Yet, for the attendees, the absence of the gospel in the whole seminar was deafening. There was neither reference to Scripture nor to Christ and his saving power. There was no mention of the centrality of Jesus for all of life. The only thing approximating the gospel was when GNM’s ‘Gracious Choir’ tried to sing ‘Yansumulula Nze,’ a familiar Luganda gospel song. But the speakers inevitably, and I think, intentionally, left the bibles on their desks closed.
Such a phenomenon isn’t uncommon to IYF and GNM seminars. Jim Dwyer of the New York Times writes that
Other than that single sentence, on the second of six Web pages, nothing else on the site explicitly discusses any religious matters.
Jim Dwyer, Traveling to Teach English; Getting Sermons Instead.
Such a statement from a secular source says it all. As it turns out, the Good News Mission excludes the good news of Jesus Christ from many, if not all, of its seminars. Such is a classic case of Christ standing at the door of the church bearing his name, only for the ushers to turn him away. The November 6th seminar’s silence about the salvation of sinful people was loud enough for Christians to hear.
Continuously and conspicuously, IYF/GNM lacks clarity as to what they mean by Mind Education. But more deplorably, they lack clearness concerning the good news they claim to represent or preach. Such reality leads me to my next question.
Mind Education or Mind Control?
Please make no mistake about it; the Makerere Mind Education Seminar was both a motivational speech and a mind control encounter.
The central aspect of this seminar was a repeated story of a beautiful woman who married an uneducated cripple. Dr Park told this tale again and again, for over 25 minutes, the repetition excluding rephrases. Through an interpreter, Park, who spoke Korean, regurgitated the same phrases and words. The repeated central terms were the woman’s positive confession amidst those opposed to her choice to marry a disabled person: ‘if I love him he will be happy, and if he is happy then I will be happy, and then we will both be happy.’
This regurgitation trick is subtle but purposeful. Psychologia positions repetition as a powerful weapon for mind control, piercing the unsuspecting. While repeating things can be useful for learning, one can, through repetition, manipulate another to believe lies as sure as the persistent waterdrops break through rocks.
This trick is especially effective when combined with other practices. Indeed, attendants of IYF’s mind control seminars elsewhere in the world speak of how, for hours, they are subjected to recorded lectures of Dr Park, often in closed rooms with security guards at hotel doors so that no one leaves. If anyone dares to depart the premises, the leadership guilt-trips them, often shaming them for their lack of open hearts/minds or being unsaved. Others report how, in some of the campsites, they starved the attendees for days before they played Dr Park’s lectures.
Another former member of GNM and IYF states that the cult-hero status of Dr Park is such that his word is as a divine oracle. Additionally, members are often manipulated into selling their properties to finance GNM’s activities.
These mind control antics do not respect age. As one reports, GNM through one of its seminars showed a video of a woman giving birth to seven-year-olds. They also played a video of a sperm racing to an egg to the same audience, including this reporter’s younger siblings, to teach them natural selection, or, the survival for the fittest competitive principle!
What Should Churches Do?
The above incidents are but a drop in the ocean. The Mind Education program now sponsored by our government and education sector is an outright mind manipulation and control campaign, by an organization which all mainline Korean churches consider to be a cult. As mentioned earlier, nothing about IYF or GNM is Christian. Except, maybe, their statement of faith and mission.
But because they come under the umbrella of Christianity, Ugandan Christian leaders must be alert. Local Ugandan churches must know the available substitute teachers for their congregants should they abscond their duty to disciple and catechize. Today, deception gallops through waves and autonomous fellowships. Between two Sundays, social media, the internet, or the self-styled prophet, will have answered a plethora of questions pastors left unanswered last Sunday. We must beware of long-range unsupervised groups that mushroom and draw many, including our front-seat members.
As such, local churches must take their mandate to worship and witness seriously. They must shepherd and sharpen their flock through biblical exposition and apologetics.
I mention apologetics because most traditional churches do not know what questions their young people have concerning life and faith. Yet, without knowing their queries, clergy cannot but talk past their sheep. Those who do so mustn’t marvel why modern movements claim their congregants in droves.
Movements like IYF or GNM try to take advantage of existing discipleship gaps with their wrong mind-control ideologies. Thus, pastors and reverends must know their Bibles, their congregants, and the cultural currents within which Christ has placed them as overseers. Churches must preach the gospel since IYF and GNM do not have the good news to offer wretched sinners. They have no divine mandate to restore broken souls. Churches do.