In Pastor Ed Kang’s Own Words – “The Letter” to Becky Kim

Aug 7, 2009 9:23 AM
In Pastor Ed Kang’s Own Words – “The Letter” to Becky Kim
by makestraight
I have found it sufficiently confounding that Pastor Ed and Kelly Kang refuse the acknowledge the sins they’ve committed, considering that both he and Kelly are guilty of similar infractions and sins that Ed laid out against Becky in splitting from Berkland Baptist Church.

Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to use Pastor Ed’s own words in order to make my point against them. The following are various excerpts, not the full letter, from Ed’s letter to Becky.

I have removed any references to other names besides Ed, Kelly and Becky.


Try to read it with Kelly and Ed in mind, in light of this post about Kelly’s own deeds. [References to JDSN are references to Becky]:

Again, at the risk of being redundant, the main problem is your insistence on your nearly-inerrant role as a Pope-like figure. Since you can do no wrong, when you DO (and you do, indeed!), we must justify it. Often, you provide your own rationalizations, and we must accept them (and suffer inner damage), and pass them on to others, and crush any who don’t accept it. This is morally wrong. Anyone else who do what you do, say what you say, and have the kind of character flaws you have will be rejected as a spiritual leader. Yet, in the strange and warped BBC pastoral world, the reverse must happen. You become exempt from all normal criteria of evaluating persons; you become above the law. Up becomes down, right becomes left, wrong becomes right.

At no point during our Irvine meeting did you ever acknowledge any wrongdoing, or any truth in anything _____ and I said in Daegu. You continued to defend and justify, and occasionally, sarcastically admitted some small character flaw of yours here and there—“yes, I have a bad temper, but it’s because I deal with people’s sin.”

I am sorry to say, but JDSN, I felt that much of the conversation was inauthentic on your part. You were speaking words designed for impact—to melt my heart—without a strong commitment to truth.

And the fruit of your ministry often produced people who were emotionally dependent on your approval.

You are the inerrant pope, and we are just peons. We (the other pastors), for our part, play dumb and dull, but the whole thing smacks of the unreality and false ritual of ancient king-to-advisor relationships.

A loving person, according to your own teaching, is sensitive to the pain of others.

You queen-like behavior, expectations regarding how you should be served are also reflective of your narcissistic character. Why should someone else get rebuked for forgetting to bring your “han-yak” [this means oriental medicine, per hamcycle]?

Please acknowledge your responsibility for the trauma, wound, and damage to self worth you have caused in many. (And please understand why I cannot tell others, without compromising my conscience and damaging their judgment faculties, that your hot temper and abusive language is because you are like one of the OT prophets.)

Flattery, dishonesty, and fear. Many of the people you surround yourself with will not tell you the whole truth. You can do 9 things wrong, and no one will challenge you or offer criticism. But if you do one thing right, they will lavish you with praise. If they will not offer you criticism, they should not give you flattery either. You have become the emperor with no clothes. (But you have fostered this atmosphere yourself.)

For many BBC pastors, your approval means everything. But since it is often not clear what will displease you, given your moodiness, spontaneity, and unpredictability, playing it safe is at a premium.

Unhealthy view of marriage. As yet another example of up being down, and right being left in your world, happily married couples are made to feel apologetic for it. Their happy marriage is not, of course, a result of anything like emotional maturity, but a lack of commitment to truth, or a lack of spirituality by which the spouses are satisfied with each other. This is very unhealthy indeed, and has caused actual damage to many marriages throughout BBC.

Given all of the above, and more, I cannot, in good conscience, lead others who follow me into the strange and warped world in which you must be adored, followed, feared, and set up as a super-spiritual christian model, where common sense must be abandoned in order to believe all of your rationalizations, and your practices be imitated, and your moods and hot temper suffered. I think this breaks people. It is a wrong I cannot continue to perpetuate.

I refuse to continue to play part in the deceit, the fraud we are perpetuating upon the public, and upon our congregation. Personally, me and Kelly felt at times that we were going insane dealing with all of this over the years. No one else should ever be asked to go through this.

I think the passages speak loudly on their own, so I will not comment on it, and leave you readers to judge truthfully and common-sensically for yourselves.

I will say one thing. The only way to break the cycle of sin being passed down is through repentance.