In the East, Straight Lines Curve

As I continue with several posts on the general worldview and religious traditions which are found in East Asia in general and Taiwan specifically (one on a (Trad.) Taiwanese vs. Western worldview here and on Far Eastern religions vs. Christianity here), a convenient example occurred to me which might help illustrate some of the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western thought, which affect how the gospel is shared here and how people on each side view each others' religious practices and principles.

1. "Straight" Lines

Tell me, what is a straight line?

If I give you a piece of paper with two points A and B already marked, I'm sure you can draw me a straight line AB between them. Some students here in Taiwan might whip a ruler out of their handy pencil/pen bags to make sure it's very neat and straight (I approve).

But what happens when I fold the paper?
Is it still a straight line then? 

"No," you might say, "the straight line between the two points must be the shortest distance. So now it's an invisible line through the air from point A to point B."

Mathematically speaking, that works. We all had at least a bit of math/geometry in school, and we grasp the definition of a straight line, at least in what we think of as normal three-dimensional space.

Or we think we do. What if I ask you to walk a straight line from one tree to another tree? Without shovel shoes, you can't do it. You have to follow the contours of the landscape locally. If you were walking a straight line from one city to another, even in Kansas (sorry Kansans, flattest place I could think of), the curvature of the earth would start to take effect. Without expensive equipment and substantial know-how, you couldn't even begin to walk a truly straight line between the two cities.

"I never turned!"

"Yes," you may say, "but no one is talking about 'mathematical' straight lines when we're talking about traveling." Quite so. In fact for air travel routes, one has to calculate the so-called Great Circle routes, which take into account the non-Euclidean geometry necessary when you're moving around on a surface that's not flat.



This is all getting complicated though, and instinctively you know the idea of a straight line is actually a simple one. It just depends on what context we're talking about. So really we're making a linguistic statement: When someone says "straight line" (in English), you understand that they mean it's the shortest distance between two points, either mathematically, if that's the context, or practically speaking, if that's the context.

Guess which line is actually the shortest distance between the two points?

2. "Straight" Lines vs. "'Straight'" Lines

One can see a very basic difference between Chinese religions* and Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) along these lines. When Christianity says "a straight line," it means "regardless of the place or time, regardless of whatever context, going from here to here or else infinity in one or both directions, without ever changing directions." We can boldly state that it will not change directions because God has given us the knowledge of an eternal, supernatural coordinate system. So we assume our straight lines and straight lines from God's perspective, which at times we come near to assuming we can see from.

(*- This would include religions influenced by Chinese culture from Taiwan to Singapore, I'm making a cultural and not a political statement)

I would submit that most Western Christian traditions have a tendency to presume a bit too much regarding what we can assume to be true of God's perspective. (Emphasizing the knowability of God is good, but we sometimes seem to think "mystery" is sort of like admitting defeat, and "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts" to be a sort of friendly challenge from God for the sufficiently motivated student) But at least, and this is hugely important, we are aware that God is capable of looking at things from outside His creation.

In our straight-line-on-paper example above, God is more like us looking at the paper. He is not the paper, nor does He reside solely "in" the paper or as part of it. In the very first verses of the Bible, God shows up as "hovering over the clean/erased paper," as it were. (My choice of words there is careful; a close look at the Hebrew yields some interesting possibilities") He is not part of His creation, He is self-existent and made creation because He wanted to. There was a point before which creation was not, but God was.

So Christians believe that 1) God draws on the paper and is not the paper, and 2) straight lines, what we might call God's Law, or capital T Truth, are what God calls straight, not merely what appear to be straight to a human observer living on/in a curved world. They might not even look straight, sometimes, in relational to our worldly context, because their coordinate system is not of this world. (I am reminded of C.S.Lewis in That Hideous Strength, where some angelic spirits appear to be oriented wrongly for the room, because they're standing up according to a celestial frame of reference and not the local one, yet in their presence it is not themselves but the room which suddenly seems to be at a funny angle.)

I think most Christians do not realize that this is almost a unique perspective in the whole world. It comes solely from God's special revelation in scripture, and no one else thinks in this way. (I am not familiar with Islam, but from what I know it a) borrows its basic conception of God directly from the Old Testament, so it's still drawing from a Judeo-Christian source, and b) in conservative Islam it goes farther to being inflexible even in the non-particulars, so that for example, I have been told until the end of time the Qur'an cannot properly be the Qur'an in any other language but old Classical Arabic. So the criticism that it is trying to drag people back to the 8th century AD seems to be at least partially deserved, because it is a time-and-culture-bound religion, it can only export the 8th century AD and Arabic culture anywhere it goes.)



All non-monotheistic global and local religions, which is to say, the default religions for the billions of people from South (India) to Northeast (Japan) Asia and naturally including Taiwan as well (plus thousands of local/traditional religions worldwide), entirely lack this basic concept. To them, however, the concept is not basic but new and foreign, as it does not occur naturally to them. Nature is not full of straight lines, and if you are born into an Asian culture, neither is life.

In the Far East, a straight line curves with the earth, and eventually comes back to where it begins. The straight line of progressing time does the same. History is a long repetitive cycle. Souls are the same, circling through heaven or hell on the wheel of karma to be reincarnated over and over again.

In fact, in the Chinese context, "straight" in the orthogonal (straight lines, right angles) sense was traditionally downright negative. Roads in the past were made to curve because evil spirits travel along orthogonal lines. City streets now don't observe that convention, but that's fine too in an Eastern context, because the right way to do something, even in a religion, does not continue straight for infinity either. It curves with the earth and with time.

At the risk of sounding very much like an engineer who then went on to seminary, I could summarize in this way: Christian Truth is Euclidean, Eastern Religious Truth is Non-Euclidean. Christian doctrine follows the unchanging standard of a God who does not change, therefore if something is Right Belief or Right Practice, it is so yesterday, today, and forever until Kingdom Come. The fights between and among different traditions (and, sadly, factions) in the church are rooted in this common understanding, so while ugly and a terrible witness to the world in terms of how they are typically fought, they are at least preferable to apathy. They happen because we know there is one unchanging truth, and we're greatly concerned with how closely we're following it. (The problem often begins with a failure to distinguish between what really is unchanging truth and how one feels that truth should properly "look" when lived out, more about which anon)

Chinese religious practice (there is no 'doctrine' per se) follows the standards of gods who are merely the most exalted inhabitants of the created order, and wouldn't be so unreasonable as to suggest religious practices shouldn't change with the times, as everything does. The Christian God is transcendent and immutable; the Chinese gods are exalted yet pragmatic. So the fights over doctrine in the Christian Church might seem strange in Chinese religion because no principle is higher than that which demands harmony between people. On the one hand, a Chinese priest might say the first step to discovering truth would be to stop fighting, versus a Christian priest who would go to his death for a truth that God has already revealed.

Christianity: "Up" towards God is always true, "Down" away from Him is always wrong
Chinese religion: "In" towards harmony/balance is true, "Out" towards disorder/disharmony is wrong

Hopefully this chart is not totally confusing. Basically in a God-based Truth system, Right and Wrong don't/can't change over time, because they are grounded in man's relationship to God and His Truth. In an East Asian Truth system, beliefs can and must change over time, because they are based on Right and Wrong with respect to how the harmonious relationships between oneself and everything in the universe are conducted.

A great example of this occurred recently: I was surprised to hear that some cities are dialoguing with religious officials about banning the burning of ceremonial paper money in cities, because it's causing air quality problems (especially on special religious holidays), and religious officials are deciding what other methods of worship could take the place of burning the spirit money. The point being, while the burning of paper money is a centuries-old established and important component of ancestor worship, the needs of 2015 must also be taken into account, and some kind of compromise can be reached which gods and ancestors theoretically won't mind. There is no doctrine which states that there is only one proper way to worship ancestors which cannot be changed if religious leaders decide otherwise and people go along with it. In other words, as part of Chinese religion, ancestor worship has progressed along the timeline, its context has changed, and it's expected to evolve accordingly. There is no fundamental issue of "right" or "wrong" in making a change, only a pragmatic one of what change will "work best"/not anger the ancestral spirits (or more importantly for the city government, their living, voting relatives). But as my diagram above illustrates, a movement "out" towards disharmony as a result of this change would indeed be "wrong," and so the dialogue is necessary so that disorder won't increase as a result of the disharmony created by arguments or unrest over the changing of an important traditional practice.



(This illustrates a very important difficulty with sharing the gospel in a Chinese cultural context: the first thing many people want to know is, "is this Chinese? Does it suit Chinese people?" For religion, nothing could be Chinese except Chinese religion, because Chinese religion by its very nature tailors itself to match the needs of Chinese people at the moment. It is the expression of spirituality of the Chinese culture, seeking harmony with the universe as it is, but it has no loving, transcendent Father God to rescue one from that broken universe and one's own personal brokenness.)

Industrial ventilation system for a traditional temple furnace where spirit money is burned

Interestingly, the argument for homosexual clergy in the church follows a more or less similar line as this kind of pragmatic religion ("times have changed, society's morals have changed, the Church can't keep ignoring that.") But because of Christianity's "straight line" beliefs, which can't change based on the times, because they are based in God's unchanging law, they have to go back and try to pretend Paul was saying other things in the Greek and never really originally meant what the church has taken as his obvious meaning ever since he wrote his letters.

Note: This is one reason "liberal Christianity" is 100% liberal and 0% Christian. That is no exaggeration. To say God's truth could change based on the vagaries of a particular human culture or "how we feel right now" is to throw out the entire basis of the revelation of God and say God calls for whatever we decide He ought to; in other words, we are God. There is no "reasonable compromise" between God's truth and man's expediencies. Those who say so are merely moral relativists who enjoy the trappings of Christian culture to a certain extent, they are not servants of Christ nor members of His body.

Now there are those who agree with the above sentiment, but would use it to bring in their own kind of spiritual dictatorship, in which "God's Truth" (by which they mean their own interpretation of it) must be followed to the letter of the(ir) law or you are a heretic and an instrument of satan. Many abusive spiritual leaders have used this method to oppress their followers. The key to staying on the right path is making a clear-cut and consistent distinction between unchanging truth and freedom of practice in Christ of that truth, which Paul helpfully spells out for us more than once. So I'm amazed at how many people manage to totally ignore passages like Romans 14 when waxing eloquent about how their version of Christian practice is the only viable or God-glorifying one, or rising up in anxious alarm over discovering a tradition different from theirs. As Paul expounds on our glorious eternal freedom in Christ and God's startling invitation for us to join into His inheritance, you can sense his frustration with those who seem to be saying "that's great Paul, eternal freedom from the bondage of sin, joining God's family, sounds interesting, but hold up a second- there's this guy in our church who eats meat wrong." (He probably likes the wrong kind of worship music too)

3. How to share a Straight gospel in a Curving culture

A. Straight Truth, Curving Cultures

Therefore, we must be careful to clearly distinguish between what is unalterable doctrine, "what does God require of us," and what are our own customs and traditions for how that works out in our lives. Having done so, we can recognize that the second category has room for cultural differences, and even the first category might get said with different vocabulary or different emphases in different cultures while not differing in substance. God is not merely an elephant with us as blind men feeling different parts, but even with the elephant clearly depicting himself for us in scripture, some cultures might emphasize the power of his tusks while some might appreciate how he never forgets, but both are within the scriptural depiction, versus a culture who claims the elephant should be covered in beautiful feathers or be a majestic royal blue. The first two are merely cultural emphases within scripture, the second are departing from scripture for reasons of culture. The difference is a fundamental one, but on the surface it can look similar if we are not being careful. If we direct those seeking a well-feathered elephant back to scripture to see that this is not the case, we are correct, but if we instruct local believers that emphasizing strong tusks is wrong because "we all know" (back home) the versatile trunk is clearly more important, it is we who have lapsed into error.

Jesus is our "Elephant," in this analogy. And the whole Bible is about Him

So as we recognize that while a belief that Truth is "straight" is scripturally necessary, so not debatable for Christians who make any claim to orthodoxy at all, our world itself is a curving one. Life has many curves and situations where a straightforward approach is neither morally required nor practically helpful, and there are lots of situations where we must make decisions based on Biblical principles and our discernment, because no direct scriptural answer is forthcoming. America was founded on Christian principles, but there were lots of secular ideas from the Enlightenment mixed in, and those have grown up together until it can be difficult to clearly distinguish between them. Our culture has its own curving lines too, so we can't pretend it's the West who is "straight" and the East who is "crooked."

Yet there may indeed be many culture-specific sinful practices going on in other cultures, in local churches too: skipping church every Sunday in Kentucky to go fishing is not less wrong than skipping church every Sunday in Osaka to go sing karaoke, but that doesn't mean we're not allowed to admonish those doing the second one. We just can't say it's more wrong because their way of sinning is different or unfamiliar from ours.



B. The Gospel Message Itself

When living in another culture, our first kneejerk reaction is often to conclude that they are "wrong" or "weird" about this or that. Later, after training or breakthrough moments, we often express the revelation that "this is not better or worse than the way we do it, just different." And while there may be situations where a cultural practice is obviously a violation of God's law (No one is going to call Aztec-style human sacrifice "a grey area."), we can be too quick to jump on "non-Christian" cultural mores which are in fact a bit complicated. Sometimes they are simply wrong, but sometimes we need to take a step back and ask whether it really goes against scripture or just our familiar practices. If the first, we must be courageous and never back down from the truth. If the second, we must swallow our pride and admit that there may be more than one way to do something that's important to us. The gospel can't be hindered by our cultural preferences, but it could be enhanced by them if we learn how to distinguish them from Truth.

So we must preach the gospel as "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks," as Paul says. Chinese culture has a little of both, perhaps. The gospel is a stumbling block when it comes to traditional religion and ancestor worship, to whom we must say "there is One God," and foolishness when it comes to those following Buddhist or Daoist philosophy, to whom we must say "have faith like a child." But to those who are called -from those who fear ancestral spirits to those who contemplate zen- Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.