• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.76
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• pp.27-49
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• 2023

Purpose of study: The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the alternative possibility of Christian children's education overcoming the current church school paradigm namely schooling system by examining the characteristics and the direction of children's spiritual education. Research content and method: This paper is a review of the characteristics of children's spiritual education and ways to embody those characteristics. Therefore, it consists of two parts: the characteristics of children's spiritual education and the search for ways to embody those characteristics. First, children's spiritual education is a "formative" model that aims to form children's spirituality based on children's spirituality research that views children as 'spiritual beings.' This model specifically has three core orientations: 'experience', 'meeting God', and 'immersion'. In other words, children's spiritual education pursues 'experience rather than knowledge', pursues the experience of meeting God in the second person rather than teaching third-person knowledge about God, and values the spiritual moment of immersion more than anything else. Second, it searches for specific ways and methods through which those three core goals could be implemented, and found that they were 'sense,' 'liturgy,' and 'story.' The sense becomes a path that evokes experience, the liturgy becomes a place for 'meeting God,' and 'story' becomes a key path to 'immersion.' And when the three are organically combined with each other, the goals pursued by children's spiritual education can be holistically converged. Conclusions and Suggestions: Through these considerations, it found that the core values and direction of education are consistently maintained in children's spiritual education, from children's understanding to education methods. It also figured out that the direction should be shared not only by children's spiritual education but also by all who pursue holistic faith education: 'what to experience' rather than 'what to teach', 'liturgy' rather than 'teaching', 'story' rather than 'explanation', and 'sensory' experiences rather than 'abstract' knowledge.

• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.36-66
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• 2011

The goal of this article is to examine the connection between creativity of unconscious and religion. Jung criticized how Freud's approach in studying the unconscious as a scientific inquiry focuses on the unconscious as reflecting only those which is repressed by the ego. Jung conceived of the unconscious as encompassing not only the repressed but also the variety of other psychic materials that have not reached the threshold of the consciousness in its range. Moreover, since human psyche is as individualistic as is a collective phenomenon, the collective psyche is thought to be pervasive at the bottom of the psychic functioning and the conscious and the personal unconscious comprising the upper level of the psychic functioning. Through clinical and personal experience, Jung had come to a realization that the unconscious has the self-regulatory function. The unconscious can make "demands" and also can retract its demands. Jung saw this as the autonomous function of the unconscious. And this autonomous unconscious creates, through dreams and fantasies, images that include an abundance of ideas and feelings. These creative images the unconscious produces assist and lead the "individuation process" which leads to the discovery of the Self. Because this unconscious process compensates the conscious ego, it has the necessary ingredients for self-regulation and can function in a creative and autonomous fashion. Jung saw religion as a special attitude of human psyche, which can be explained by careful and diligent observation about a dynamic being or action, which Rudolph Otto called the Numinosum. This kind of being or action does not get elicited by artificial or willful action. On the contrary, it takes a hold and dominates the human subject. Jung distinguished between religion and religious sector or denomination. He explained religious sector as reflecting the contents of sanctified and indoctrinated religious experiences. It is fixated in the complex organization of ritualized thoughts. And this ritualization gives rise to a system that is fixated. There is a clear goal in the religious sector to replace intellectual experiences with firmly established dogma and rituals. Religion as Jung experienced is the attitude of contemplation about Numinosum, which is formed by the images of the collective unconscious that is propelled by the creativity and autonomy of the unconscious. Religious sector is a religious community that is formed by these images that are ritualized. Jung saw religion as the relationship with the best or the uttermost value. And this relationship has a duality of being involuntary and reflecting free will. Therefore people can be influenced by one value, overcome with the unconscious being charged with psychic energy, or could accept it on a conscious level. Jung saw God as the dominating psychic element among humans or that psychic reality itself. Although Jung grew up in the atmosphere of the traditional Swiss reformed church, it does not seem that he considered himself to be a devoted Christian. To Jung, Christianity is a habitual, ritualized institution, which lacked vitality because it did not have the intellectual honesty or spiritual energy. However, Jung's encounter with the dramatic religious experience at age 12 through hallucination led him to perceive the existence of living god in his unconscious. This is why the theological questions and religious problems in everyday life became Jung's life-long interest. To this author, the reason why Jung delved into problems with religion has to do with his personal interest and love for the revival of the Christian church which had lost its spiritual vitality and depth and had become heavily ritualized.