A "Foreign Religion" - The Gospel in an East Asian Context

I once observed to an experienced missionary, after a couple brief trips to Taiwan, that I'd noticed although we came from different cultures and looked different from one another, really people were the same everywhere. He replied that it could seem that way initially, on the surface, but suggested there were some big differences deeper down. I said at the core we were all human after all. "Yes," he replied, "deep down we're the same, and on the surface we're similar, but... it's that stuff in the middle that gets you."

As I now live here in Taiwan, I daily experience how troublesome that "middle stuff" can be when trying to communicate truths that strike at that core where, although people are indeed fundamentally the same, looking down through those radically different layers in the middle can make things look quite different too.

Ministry here tends to remind me of a bank teller or gas station employee behind protective glass; they can get what you need for you, from a place you can't go, then they place it in the pass-thru tray in the security slot, and you get it out of the tray. A hand-off has occurred, but the separation between you and them requires an extra mediating step where the object is in neither your hand nor theirs.

Now imagine a bank teller who is not willing to let go of the object, to relinquish control in neutral territory, but requires you to snake your arm up through the tray's security slot to take it from their hand directly. Can it be done? Children may be able to do it (appropriately, for this analogy), but it's not a good model, and defeats the purpose of the arrangement. Are we, consciously or unconsciously, doing the same thing?

Cultural exchanges give you more or less room, it all depends
on which two cultures you're trying to pass something between

To extend the metaphor, all observations suggest that Taiwan has a narrower or deeper security slot than arriving missionaries had expected. Hundreds of churches that were founded "Westernly" continued in that fashion, and remain small and stagnant now that their original influx of foreign motivating energy and resources is shut off. They can't thrive in Taiwan because they're trying to live with their arm shoved through the security slot. The hand-off never occurred successfully.

In this post I will set up by taking a brief look at what religion looks like in East Asia. In doing so we'll see factors that make successfully communicating the gospel a complicated and unwieldy task here, and then see whether a change of perspective can help us to that end. (or that beginning, rather)

2. Religion in East Asia

 

East Asian religious are deeply pantheistic and thus inherently non-monotheistic. The widespread adoption of Christianity in Korea, and its rapid growth in China, are not primarily due to a successful demonstration of cultural or conceptual bridges to those societies, but of national/cultural-identity-level crises in those places which opened the hearts of people to something new. (I am not discounting the work of the Spirit, without which no heart seeks or finds, but describing the history of the Church in this part of the world. Perhaps in heaven we will understand better that other side of the story.) What this means is that Christianity was never successful in the traditional cultural context of East Asian nations. In some of them major cultural upheavals in the 20th century left millions of people without that context, and in desperate need, and the message of the gospel came as good news indeed. In some, like Japan or Taiwan, the Church has remained very marginalized despite difficult times and poverty existing historically in those places as well.

My contention is that it is not sufficient to encounter want or need, things one can overcome through means already present within the culture, but a culture's worldview has to be shaken to its core or made untenable before people turn en masse to a very different conception of the world. (I am open to being proven wrong on this point, but it does seem to explain what we've seen and not seen in East Asia)

Contrary to the common belief that the Far East is "Buddhist," the nations of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Mongolia and Vietnam) contain a vast array of different religions and traditional beliefs, which it would be impossible to list or even briefly describe here. So I am only going to concentrate on a few major ones, which will hopefully serve to sufficiently demonstrate my point. (Exceptions can always be found; this is Asia.)

Shinto: the Japanese cultural religion

Torii - a gate marking the transition to a sacred space in Shinto

The name: "Shinto" is composed of two Chinese characters, 神 ("Shen" - divinity, spirit) and 道 ("Dao" - way), and Shin-to is the Japanese pronunciation of these two Chinese terms. (the Japanese word for 神, is kami, see below)
View of the universe: The universe is filled with divine energy, and this energy is continuously manifesting itself as 'kami,' (usually translated as 'gods' which is too narrow but there's no good English equivalent), which are personifications of the divine energy of the universe as spirits which rest in objects in nature, animals (and to some extent people), and even some man-made objects, but including more conventional gods, fantastic creatures, and spirits as well.
The goal: To live in accordance with the "way of the kami," which is accomplished through certain ceremonies (esp. at important life occasions) and closely identified with nature and the natural world. (The spiritual importance of nature can be quickly observed in Japanese media and culture) Note: there is no heaven as such, and not really any hell either. (One of my sources said Shinto followers who believe in the concepts of a heavenly reward and hellish punishment before reincarnation typically borrow these conceptions from another religion, for example Buddhism) In general, the focus is very much on this life. 

Taoism: an important Chinese religion/philosophy
(sometimes written as "Daoism")

The Yin-Yang symbol of the Tao is now famous around the world

The name: the 'Tao' in this word is an English rendering of 道 (Dao, "way") the same character as in Shinto above.The "-ism" in English reflects the use of a Chinese character which means "belief system."
View of the universe: There is one divine truth/principle/way which is the source of all that is, and the force behind it, and the means by which it is ordered and sustained. The essence of the Tao cannot really be communicated, but can be grasped through experience. Depending on the school of thought, like Buddhism, Taoism varies from being almost purely philosophic to having its own interpretation of Chinese polytheism.
The goal: To live one's life in accordance with the Tao. One will then be at harmony with the universe. Note: Though the various schools of Taoist thought have varying conceptions of heaven and hell (or the lack thereof), the focus is on achieving the Tao in this life. 

Confucianism: the foundational Chinese ethical system

 

One of the central figures of Chinese culture

The name: Most Westerners have heard of Confucius... but Confucianism as it is thought of today comprises both his teachings and many later schools of thought and subsequent interpretations.
View of the universe: Confucius deferred questions of the divine and focused on the duties and responsibilities and relationships between people as the moral good, which would lead to whatever supernatural benefits they needed to. Family is hugely important. (Note: The impact of Confucianism on Chinese culture in the widest sense can hardly be overemphasized. While not a technical religion, it became "rules by which life must be lived" in China to a greater and deeper degree than many religions achieved in their own cultural contexts. Confucius is also now commonly worshiped among Chinese polytheists)
The goal: To become a moral and upright person (scholar, if possible) who lives one's life in right relation to other people, and observing the proper respect for authority and one's family (both living and departed). Note: an afterlife is assumed but the focus is on the responsibilities of the living to the departed. 

Chinese Folk Religion: Chinese Traditional Polytheism

Longshan Temple in Taiwan, with a variety of idols and shrines

The name: This is the Chinese variety of folk/traditionalist religion which exists in every culture.
View of the universe: As outlined in a previous post, there is both a visible and an unseen world on this earth, and the gods and spirits of that unseen world, including ancestral spirits, can impact one's life in a variety of positive and negative ways, and must be appropriately entreated and appeased by the living. In Chinese religion, there is also a bewildering hierarchy of gods from the kitchen and rice field gods to ascended historical figures to the Jade Emperor of Heaven. Closely intertwined with some forms of Taoism (in Taiwan, traditional idolatry is often called Taoism, to distinguish it from Buddhism), with Taoist priests often serving in the role of religious professionals and specialists and Taoist "doctrine" considered authoritative. Has a similar conception to Shinto (which is basically the Japanese version of this belief system) of a divine/spirit world to which a wide variety of things in the natural world are linked.
The goal: To live in accordance with the unseen world in such a way that leverages maximum success in life for one's self and one's family (both living and departed), and maximum avoidance of spiritual dangers. 

Buddhism: the pan-Asian religion

Finally, what you thought everyone in Asia believed...

The name: As everyone knows, Buddha is considered the founder of this religion.
View of the universe: Buddhism inherited much of its conception of the universe from Hindu thought, with humans on an endless cycle of reincarnation which can dip into hell or ascend into heaven, but whose ultimate goal is escape from this wheel of karma and ascension to enlightened buddhahood. (There are so many types and 'denominations' of Buddhism it's difficult to generalize. Some like Tibetan buddhism are shamanistic, others like Zen are almost purely philosophical) Buddhism is more individualistic than most Chinese religious traditions, concerned with one's own path to enlightenment, and is more abstract and less pragmatic,
The goal: The achievement of enlightenment and buddhahood, escaping the wheel of karma and reincarnation. Chinese adherents are often not strict practitioners but simply trying to be good enough Buddhists in this life to make their theoretical next (reincarnated) life a little better. Buddhist doctrine teaches that as participants in the divinity of the universe we all possess the potential of godhood, and serious practitioners seek to cultivate and develop this godhood in order to ascend via enlightenment to buddhahood, escaping the cycle of karma and enjoying both eternal bliss and the potential to help others ascend.

3. Comparing to Christianity...

A. Principles These Religions Share:

There are some common threads running through all of these religions and religious traditions.
First let's talk about what they share (in no particular order):
1. An eternal universe infused with divine energy
2. The importance of living in harmony with "the way the universe is," vs. trying to alter reality
3. The fact that this divinity manifests itself throughout nature and people partake in it along with nature
4. Reincarnation (I've been told I must have been Taiwanese in a previous life!)
5. An emphasis on one's earthly life/lives and not the afterlife (in between reincarnations?)
6. Gods and spirits which are manifestations of the divine energy of the universe- even the highest gods are not transcendent (The Heavenly Emperor of Taoism got that way by millions of years of meditation)
7. Pluralism - most of these religions are compatible in their 'big picture' assessment of the universe
8. Pragmatism - whatever you do, religious or not, is done to achieve a practical result in this world or to benefit your family/self

To sum up, the universe is eternal and divine beings arise from the general divinity with which the whole universe and especially all life is infused. The closest thing to an omnipotent God conceivable would be a personality which represents or can speak on behalf of the totality of the divine energy of the universe, which is still far from a monotheistic Creator God. Humans are primarily concerned with living in harmony with the universe and unseen world in this life to achieve positive results and avoid negative spiritual influences, and the religious acts or duties they perform are to this end.

1. - Many portals between the natural and spiritual world exist in Eastern religions
2. - Why 'Ghost Month' is scary: A gate from hell opens and the tormented spirits enter the living world
3. - Reincarnation: Heaven and Hell are temporary, based on your actions in life, until you reincarnate later
4. - Family are one's closest context, the dead as well as the living, to be honored both in life and death
5. - Some people are connected to the spirit world (mediums, fortune tellers, etc)
6. - The temple is a place to deal with both spirits and gods

This graphic serves to illustrate a bit of a generic idea of where East Asian religion puts the individual in the context of the universe. Note that only the celestial realm, where the gods or ascended masters/buddhas dwell, is really clearly outside/"above" the earth, whereas the spirit world is on earth, part of the unseen world. (Heaven and hell are iffy, either part of the unseen world on earth but with "portals" to the living world, especially hell, or removed from the earth to varying extents depending on the sect)

B. Differences with Christianity

Now let's look at what these religions don't share with Christianity:
1. A transcendent God - There is no omnipotent or truly eternal God in any East Asian religion. Even depictions of more or less supreme deities show them as subject to aging, various limitations, and not existing separate from or prior to creation.
2. An overarching narrative of Good vs. Evil (This is huge. There's simply no narrative, as shown in 3.)
3. A Timeline - there is no "Genesis to Revelation" in any of these religions. They begin in the mythical depths of time, and there is no apocalypse. The universe is eternal as it is.
4.  A separation of humans from the rest of creation - humans are just special participants in the divine energy of the universe, able to choose to reconcile themselves to it or not, but not distinct from it.
5. Final judgment - Related to 3. There is no final judgment of all humanity, merely a sense that terrible people might risk hell and amazing people might have a blissful afterlife.
6. Eternal heaven and hell - This is confusing, but so far as I can tell, those are just waiting places until you are reincarnated. Certainly not determined by your relationship to an eternal God.
7. Holiness - When we all share in the divine energy of the universe, nothing is truly 'set apart'
8. Loving one's neighbor as oneself - The only special duty regarding love is to demonstrate love for your family by subjugating your needs to theirs, all other love can be given or withheld as seems right or reasonable.
9. No other gods before Me - There is no God in any of these religions who could even make this demand, no good god that would seek to hoard all the worship for himself, and furthermore if all gods* are just exalted entities who are manifestations of divinity, any of them are theoretically "true" and thus worthy of whatever level of worship their abilities or personalities render pragmatically appropriate.
10. I could go on, you get the picture. There are numerous very fundamental issues which make even grasping what sort of belief system Christianity is difficult for local people not previously exposed to it.

*- In East Asian religions this even extends to 'foreign' gods. So for example in Taiwan you would be hard pressed to get a local religious person to speak ill or deny the existence of any deity in any religion, because they're just as likely to be a god in their context as the local's gods are in his, and it's possible offending a foreign god could have its consequences as well.

4. An Automatically Foreign Religion

One can see from the lists above that religion in East Asia by its very nature makes the gospel sound strange and foreign in this context. The urgency of the claim doesn't translate because there's no timeline (if I die I'll just come back until I get it right), and there's no personal God. There's no "God" at all. The conception of the universe from which religion is approached is so different in the East and West that often the good news of the gospel simply doesn't translate. "Jesus sounds like a wonderful god" is often the most positive response one can get early on.

In general there are two approaches taken by East Asian religious practitioners with regard to non-Asian deities. I base these on my experiences in Taiwan and with Chinese Buddhists in the U.S.:

A. Two worlds, Two systems

In the traditional view (left side of the diagram), local people simply assume that things operate under a different system in the Western world. There is no attempt to make their personal religion universal, as the East and West are so manifestly different in every respect, it seems reasonable that they would have different gods and different religions.
Bringing up Jesus with someone with this outlook will typically result in a comment along the lines of "Oh yes, Jesus is your god, the Western/American god. Here we have our own gods. It's good that you are religious, me too."

B. Two worlds, One system

In this view (right side of the diagram), more likely to be held by more serious practitioners of their faith traditions (not applicable to folk religion, which is inherently, and proudly, culture-bound), there is a recognition that the validity of one's religion to some extent depends on its ability to explain other religions and cultures according to its own terms. It is still pluralistic, however. There may be sects or varieties of Buddhism that mandate proselytizing, but I have ever only once been proselytized by a Chinese Buddhist, and that was in a friendly way, with no implication that their doctrine was universal.

Thus the gospel is a stumbling block; the special revelation of scripture is facts about reality which we could not have discovered by our own devices, and is true of all reality, not this culture or that. Jesus was clear. "All power in heaven and on earth" has been given to the Son; we must go to "the ends of the earth" and to "all nations" to preach His gospel. It's a fundamentally different kind of undertaking. (Only Islam demonstrates a similar mandate, and that's copied from Christianity centuries after the fact.)

But bringing up Jesus with someone holding to the pluralistic outlook might get you a response along the lines of  "Oh yes, Jesus must have been an exalted teacher, a previously ascended buddha or a master of the Tao. It's clear he was able to perform great works and heal and inspire many people by his deep connection with the divine energy of the universe."

Notably, Jesus' claim to be God doesn't trouble a real Buddhist in the slightest: "Of course, we all have the seed of godhood within us. He was teaching people a deep truth, even if they didn't understand him at the time."

(It is only those raised within a monotheistic tradition for whom this claim carries its real weight, something God spent centuries specifically hammering into the Jews so that they'd be prepared to understand the claim Jesus was really making: "There is One G-D, who I AM.")


C. Another Kind of Language Barrier

The deep lack of division between the singular and plural in the Chinese language reinforces this- there is no difference between the word "god" and "gods" if you don't put a number in front of it. Also, Chinese has no articles. So "I am God" "I am the gods" "I am a god" "I am the God" are all exactly the same sentence in Chinese, not to mention that the idea of big-G God has been absent in Chinese culture for thousands of years, if it was ever there. So it's difficult to share the gospel precisely because the language itself inherently resists that kind of precision, as does the culture, especially with regard to religion.

5. Getting the Gospel past that Security Tray

We may at this point realize that the great meta-cultural divides of the world run very deep indeed in our hearts and minds. We set out to bring Christ to another culture, and immediately run into problems because we can't do it "Westernly." So then, like good Westerners, we try to find precise vectors within their culture to translate the Western understanding of the gospel and scripture. Being human, we all find it challenging to measure success if it doesn't seem to correspond to our own experiences or the goals we set out to accomplish. But in a sense, all ministry involves learning, sometimes by painful experience, that setting what seem like reasonable human goals and working measurably towards them is not necessarily how God gets things done. Cross-cultural ministry then introduces a second dimension: we find the process of achieving our goal of gospel reproduction within a given culture requires cooperating with the local believers of that place, who see the world and life itself in a remarkably different way from us; a difference that in places like Taiwan sometimes remains partly hidden, depending especially on the person's age and social class, to emerge dramatically at inconvenient moments.

Sadly, it may be that the window of opportunity has passed; Christianity is already universally considered "the Western religion" by the average Taiwanese nonbeliever, and those who practice it here do so in ways often informed by American church practices, for better (inductive Bible studies) and for worse (the prosperity "gospel"). But I find myself wishing deeply that the gospel, which has transcended so many cultural barriers, could be communicated in a natively Taiwanese worldview.

The differences are too profound to be solved with a "silver bullet"; i.e. I can't conceive of a "Peace Child" solution that provides a perfect cultural example of the meaning of the gospel, although as Don Richardson (see the link) proposed, I believe there are redemptive analogies in every culture. Many people, including myself and my coworkers, have made use of the fact that the Chinese character for Righteousness, 義, consists of the character for Sheep, over the character for Me. (Thus Righteousness comes from the Lamb covering Me. Certainly a strong pointer back to the truth)

But we have to do the best we can to continue searching for those kinds of redemptive analogies, and perhaps portions of the Bible that don't seem that compelling to us in the West would resonate with those looking from a different cultural angle. (There is the famous story, for example, of the tribe that converted because of the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew. Genealogies go over better in Taiwan too, since they demonstrate deep respect for family and prior generations that many Taiwanese assume Christians lack since we do not practice ancestor worship) 

In any case, I believe pre-evangelism cannot consist of an attempt to debunk someone's entire worldview in preparation for sharing the gospel from one's own worldview. I wonder, for example, how one begins to share the gospel with someone who believes in reincarnation without first demanding they stop believing in reincarnation. Going to the lost with the gospel vs. waiting for them to come to you must happen in more ways than geography and language.

Tell me, according to scripture where do Satan and the fallen angels live?
Where did Daniel's angel, Michael, and the Prince of Persia have a fight?
Scripture teaches that our world is more complicated than the Western
worldview admits, yet in churches we tend to either shy away from the
ramifications of that idea and pretend it only exists theoretically, or else
embrace it too enthusiastically and start finding the devil in everything.

Let us never forget, our modern western worldview is not in perfect harmony with scripture either. We all start from a default cultural worldview, and then our outlook begins to be transformed by God's truth, but this happens on an individual basis. Certainly, the West was transformed by Christianity, but this transformation was accompanied by a parallel secular transformation as well, which influences our view of scripture in a certain direction. It's possible a local believer here, having studied the scripture, would arrive at a biblical worldview much closer to that of the original authors than we would. (The Middle East and Asia in general have much more in common than either traditionally does to the West)

I'm not engaging in reflexive multiculturalism here. (If anywhere on earth, it is East Asia that most recognizes and praises the value and cultural legacy of Western Civilization) But it's true that certain things and ideas jump out of scripture at us because of who we are and what culture we grew up in, and that other things and ideas will jump out at people coming from other cultural perspectives. The exchange can be fruitful, and I believe in the years to come the Church will be greatly enriched by the contributions and faithfulness of cultures in mission-focus areas in the past two centuries and now have growing and maturing indigenous church movements of their own.

But what I hope to encounter in Taiwan is an insider understanding of the gospel- Taiwanese believers who understand the gospel from within their birth culture context and approach it directly from that place, without first taking a detour to approach the faith from an outside perspective, American or Korean or otherwise. I believe those people are running around on this island somewhere, and I hope I can meet them. (Perhaps I'll have to learn Taiwanese first) They will be the ones sharing the gospel with other Taiwanese in a way that doesn't require them to have a general understanding of Western thinking first, which is precisely the situation of that major segment of the Taiwanese population that remains the largest unreached Chinese group in the world.

In the mean time, I plan to keep sharing the gospel with my friends here, and to also listen closely for those cues and hints that reveal the worldview behind the words. The better picture I have of that worldview, the better I will know how the communicate the gospel in a way that sounds as much like good news to them in their life as it has proved itself to be in my life.