May God let you do the same to your children

Since the summer of last year (2014), I began a research about Old Testament for a specific words.  I had brand new idea and wanted to prove it.  When I told Ted Hiebert, the OT professor and the dean of the faculty at McCormick Theological Seminary, and Paula Hiebert, the Hebrew language professor, they told me they’ve never heard about that idea.  That means there are super big chance for my idea to be wrong.  But they said it is quite interesting idea and encouraged me to dig deeper by guiding me how to do further research on this.  They even lent me their books.

Since then, I was reading many books related to this, and have not found anything meaningful.  Then I talked to Steed Davison, the new McCormick faculty of OT.  He also said he’s never heard about this idea.  Well, the chance for my idea to be right went down even more.

Then couple months later, I had a chance to talk to Frank Yamada, the president of McCormick and also (used to be) OT professor.  He also said “never heard.”  Now I became kind of hopeless.  But even though all of them said “never heard” in one voice, they did not forget to encourage me.

When I talked about this with my academic advisor, Bob Cathey, he gave me a contact information, YS Kim, McCormick graduate and a professor at another school.  So I emailed him introducing myself and that Bob Cathey recommended him.

Kim replied to my email but it was very extremely rude, and the attitude was 180 degree opposite from other McCormick (or American) professors.  He said he has nothing to say about such unclear and imaginative non-sense.  And he discouraged me for further contact with other words.

I was quite shocked because I did not expect that rude reaction.  Bob told me initially that YS is very kind and polite.  Maybe he is, probably only to those who are higher and/or more powerful than he is.  Why is he so proud?  Because he came to America from Korea and became a professor (in other word, achieved very high social location)?  Koreans say that Korean culture is shaped by Confucianism.  But if you read the Confucianism sacred texts carefully, Korean culture is not what Confucius imagined for.

I wish he does the same thing to his children what he did me — kill the imagination and hope.

Well, if I comment one thing, I finally found a proof about what he said “such imaginative non-sense.”