Imagine the shock of realizing this 18 years too late… For my wife and I, we didn’t see these problems while “in” ubf. We only saw them after leaving. In our case (which is not everyone’s case) we had to get away before we could see all the problems. My wife was more aware of all the problems sooner, but I was too blind to see them.

So now, after 20 years of marriage, we are dating :)

Ben, I used to use this defense on my priestlynation.com website. I can see now that this is such a lame, pathetic misdirection of an argument. Let’s think this through…

If ubf leaders claim they have healthy families because they think there are only 5 divorces out of 100, then they have no idea what makes for a healthy family. The absence of divorce does not equate to healthy couples. That just means the couples stay together and says nothing about why. Perhaps they avoid divorce due to fear. Maybe they only stay together out of keeping face or because they are far too invested in the ubf lifestyle to back out.

Why do couples marry in ubf through their arranged marriage process called marriage-by-faith? They marry each other because of obedience to the ubf authorities that put them together. And they marry because of loyalty to the ubf system. What are the vows of ubf couples? They don’t write vows. They answer “yes” to various questions about commitment to the ubf system.

No one going through a ubf arranged marriage marries purely out of love for the other person. That has to develop after marriage. Sometimes, as in Beka’s case, divorce is the only option toward a healthy relationship.

ubf couples need to wake up and talk about something other than feeding sheep, living on campus and serving one-to-one world campus mission in order to make their country a kingdom of priests and holy nation.

If they don’t they may wake up one day to divorce papers.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/07/03/america-church-divorce-rates/

The problem is really not this “good” statistic of 95%, but that some/many UBF leaders use it to claim and justify UBF as a healthy ministry, compared to most other churches that have a much higher divorce rate.

If ubf is so healthy and such a great ministry, were are all the healthy families?

I am also referring to many Korean ubfers who took the ubf soldier oath… “We are soldiers of Jesus Christ!”

I am also referring of course to the new website ubf started in 2013 to guard the ubf heritage (their terminology).

To say that UBFers “have taken a vow unto death to defend the ubf herigage” could be regarded as a kind of negative caricature that nobody likes, as well as straw-manning the other side, don’t you think?

This is also rather clear to me, Ben. Why do they press on blindly? Because they have taken a vow unto death to defend the ubf heritage. Remember the ubf pledge? When you take such an oath, you become blind to much of the realty around you.

Perhaps more ubf Koreans should take the following Holy Scripture as their key verses: Matthew 5:33-37

This mystery is not so mysterious Ben. God made some of us healthy and brought some of us Christians (like myself who was a Christian already before ubf) into the ubf ministry for at least one clear reason: to bring the abuse and harm into the light of public scrutiny.

God in His wisdom knew that someone like myself, my wife, Beka and Andrew, and others, would survive the ubf system and be able to go through the exit process and then live to tell about it. God likely knew that there would be people like you and Joe who would speak up about the problems.

Surely the ultimate reason is because the Lord is our one Shepherd who leads us all for His glory. I believe God wanted to reveal His glory in a dark place, and that place is the underbelly of ubf that ubf leaders refuse to acknowledge. Well, not only does that dark side of ubf exist, Jesus is there.

The “mystery” of course, is why God would in his loving sovereign will use UBF to bring us happily married couples together, since God knows full well about UBF in all her eccentricities and ugly hurtful insensitive authoritarian practices, that some leaders still do not see or refuse to see to this day. Or they see it, but refuse to acknowledge it or address it.

I don’t think that the problem was ever really UBF marriages, but certain leaders behind the marriages that simply soured the sweet memory of some UBF weddings, marriages and subsequent family life.

Personally, I really don’t see how UBF can just “blindly” and insistently press on forward by ignoring the past, or by refusing to seriously address the past.

Correct, forests. I hope everyone can start to see my point in my second book about something I call burden layers. ubf does indeed share several problems common with evangelical (and more specifically fundamentalist) expressions of Christianity.

Speaking of arranged marriages at uhf, here are some more tidbits for everyone’s enjoyment.

We were not allowed to “kiss the bride”. We had to argue and push to be the “historic” couple to do a cut the cake ceremony. We tried but lost the battle to have a reception after the ceremony, so the compromise was to have some food at the ubf center. Our wedding day ceremony was shared with another couple, TP and MP, who were also top ubf leaders and who also left ubf.

There are literally thousands of more stories. Joe has already shared some of their wedding day heartache regarding the ceremony. The bottom line is that the ubf “marriage by faith” is disrespectful of the culture in which people live and cuts deeper into people’s lives than any other part of the ubf system.

Congratulations on 20 years Brian!One thing someone observed, and I am not sure it is a bad thing but I realized how bizarre it was. At a recent wedding I attended the bride and groom were absolutely forbidden from touching or holding hands before the marriage ceremony. And then after marriage it was suddenly ok. The person who noted this to me expressed dissatisfaction at what she viewed to be a strange rule, as if the ceremony suddenly allowed them to hold hands. As far as sex being taboo, this isn’t a unique thing to UBF. Most evangelical groups get weird about the topic. Interestingly in the hand full of marriages of highly conservative people I have observed the families have joked with the newly weds about the topic. It is always an off limits topics for singles, but with married people it varies from place to place.

I sing because I’m happy.
I sing because I’m free.
His eye is on the sparrow.
And I know he watches me.