Abstract

The study is grounded in the Christian faith that when God created human beings in the imago Dei, they lived in divine shalom: wholeness and holiness in communion with God and in community of God through peace, completeness, well-being, prosperity, faith, love and hope. Since the Fall, shalom seemed to be more a mythical ideal than an actuality. The East and the West have attempted to discern the mystery of human suffering and have sought ways to resolve it, but have failed on both counts. Neither traditional healing methods of shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, traditional medicine, and the minjung theology in the East , nor philosophy, theology and psychology in the modern West have been fully effective in dealing with human suffering/han. ;This study seeks to define human suffering in wholistic terms, employing Korean concept of han as "suffering hope" in the negative sense and "hopeful suffering" in the positive sense. And continuum is developed which classifies four different types of han: negative-active , negative passive , positive-passive , positive active . This continuum is further defined across four dimensions: spiritual, psychological, social and physical. This study suggests to balance with a theology of sin, han and shalom so that faith journey can include shalom building on earth as a kingdom building. ;In constructing a new healing method, the study seeks to integrate the general and the special revelation as it honors the East and the West and integrates philosophy and psychology with theology from the biblical perspective. It addresses the premodern, modern, and contemporary postmodern paradigms and reevaluates key insights. The study then suggests scopes of shalom in essentia-, micro-, meta-, macro-, mega-, and supreme- matrices of human life. With these scopes the study suggests a Shalom Well Being Pie to help a whole person map one's well being. The study of suffering/han and shalom ultimately is to help a person of God enjoy the vision and mission of life in communion with God and in the community of God as a suffering and transforming agent with authentic Christian discipline and apostolic discipleship