K-Dramas and What I've Learned From Them

Thanks to your friendly neighbourhood streaming service I've been getting into K-Dramas lately. "K-Dramas?" you ask?

K-Dramas or Korean Dramas are Korean soap opera TV shows. Why would they appeal? Well friend, for a few reasons; they are over the top dramatic! I am learning about another culture which is similar but so different from my own and there is always a couple of bodily function jokes thrown in there (I'm not too mature for some scatological humour).

I found a series recently named "Falling Into Your Smile" which was not a K-Drama technically because it was made in China but it fits into the category thematically as it has the same elements as your typical K-Drama; a group of impossibly attractive young people thrown together by fate, two unlikely members of the group find themselves attracted to one another despite the odds, important moments of romantic tension shot from multiple angles and played one after another so you really DO NOT miss this turning point in their relationship. All that good stuff.

However what intrigued me most about this series was the many and varied subtle ways in which Chinese culture differs from my own [white bread New Zealander]. Each personal interaction between characters was marked by a social etiquette, hierarchy and spiritual background that was, for lack of a better word, alien to me. It reminded me of the other series from China I absolutely recommend: "Flavourful Origins", which explores food in different areas of China. Traditional Chinese food differs so wildly from my own culture's traditions of preparing and eating that I marveled at the way cultures can evolve over thousands of years to be almost parallel universes of the same world we humans live in. We are all the same, and yet, so different...

The main characters in "Falling Into Your Smile" often quote Chinese proverbs to one another to explain their thoughts or feelings. It's hard for me to see how the proverb gets the point across but for the people in the situation the meaning is clear and they carry on their discussion seamlessly. I see in that moment that I need some background or immersion in their way of thinking to fully understand what is happening.

Which finally brings me to my musings on the Word of God *Segway alert!* If I live in a world which at this very moment has cultures that have frameworks of thinking which differ so vastly from my own, how can I be so presumptuous to think that I can read an ancient text from a culture not my own and think that I can get the meaning out of it easily? Wouldn't I need to do even a little work to try to understand their way of thinking before I jump in with a conclusion?

Fortunately we live in an age which has an abundance of work already done for us in this area so that it's not too hard to find out the basics to get us started on our Bible understanding journey. Old Testament scholar Dr John Walton and his work in the OT has been very helpful to me lately in getting me out of myself and into the shoes of the Ancient Israelite living in the Promised Land. From what I have learned so far the Ancient Israelite way of thinking seems to be more similar to the Chinese way of thinking; hierarchy brings order (God given or otherwise), the spiritual is never far from the material, and symbolic imagery holds more meaning than clinical reasoning, not to mention a little scatological humour (1 Kings 18:27).

I still don't understand all of the times Jesus or the Apostles dropped in an OT quote or saying to explain themselves but I have had a whole world opened up to me. This older framework of thinking has helped me become excited and intrigued with the older parts of the Bible and gain a much deeper understanding of them. So now instead of asking myself WWJD* I can ask myself WWMT? (What Would Moses Think?) and because Moses pained himself to point us forward to the much needed Messiah using the God given imagery and symbolism in the Torah we can see and understand clearer each day the greatest love shown to all: WDJD? - What Did Jesus Do [for us]? The Bible even shoots it from four angles.

*What Would Jesus Do?

Some further reading:

Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Dr John Walton)

God's Big Picture (Vaughan Roberts)

The Unfolding Mystery (Edmund Clowney)