Bet you thought this was gonna be another of my long, convoluted essays...sorry to disappoint you. ;-) I'm just linking to a couple of posts I found at GetReligion (that I wish I'd found earlier) which discuss the South Korean Christian hostage incident.
First, Daniel Pulliam notes, as did Michelle Malkin, that the hostages' kidnapping was "one of the most neglected international stories by the American media" and offers reasons why.
Then, he raises, much more intelligently and in-depth than I did, good-reporter questions about the South Korean missionary hostage bargaining as prompted by Dr. Leroy Huizenga, who wondered "why the issue of the South Korean government controlling the actions of the missionaries isn’t receiving more scrutiny." He asks about the nature of the missionaries' work; whether they were proselytizing or merely giving aid and how can this be known, especially when the churches' stories themselves conflict. He asks, "Is the church lying?"
Note: By calling attention to these questions, I don't mean to ignore nor imply any hard-heartedness toward the hostages themselves and what they had to go through. But they are part of a bigger picture. We all are. As we read in II Corinthians 4:7-10 (NASB):
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexd, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
