Eureka Moments: G.K.Chesterton on Paganism

One delight of the testimony of godly men throughout the ages post-printing press is that so much of their work remains available for us to be instructed by and profit from, as indeed I believe they rejoice to see.

In my teens probably no single Christian author was a bigger influence on me than C.S.Lewis. As an INTP trying to reconcile my inherited faith with my growing knowledge about the world and exposure to secular academia, Lewis' ability to rationally and reasonably explain a Christian worldview and how attacks on it are almost always inherently contradictory, along with his simple love of God's creation and desire to capture the Christian imagination as well as mind, left a lifelong impression on me that continues to this day, evidenced in the fact that I have trouble making it through two blog posts without quoting him at least once. (The "trick people into running around with fire extinguishers when the problem is a flood" analogy found in the Screwtape Letters is a gift that keeps on giving these days)

Where Faith and Reason are Strangers...

Lewis helped me form a really robust, scripturally-based worldview which has served me well as an engineer/programmer-turned-missionary. Coming to Taiwan, however, I have been perpetually surprised and fascinated at the wholesale lack of a felt need for religious belief to be reconciled with logic or reason. People believe mutually exclusive faith systems simultaneously, seemingly with perfect equanimity, yet evidence that something deeper is at play can be seen in the fact that nearly everyone I have asked "Where does the Buddha fit into the pantheon of Chinese deities?" has replied with surprise "I've never thought about that before. I guess it's different?"

Some western-educated people living here believe, though not always expressing it in so many words, that it's a defect of a society that hasn't truly understood rationality on a culture-wide level. Yet my impression has never been exactly like that. To be sure, the sort of Math-Logic-Philosophy mental framework that the West has preserved since Ancient Greece doesn't seem to be mirrored by anything in the pan-Chinese historical tradition. I'm sure smart people thought of it at points throughout history, and were sometimes exposed to those very same Greek philosophers via the Silk Road connection (the "Byzantium-Baghdad-Beijing" trade connections that passed along cultural knowledge too), but for whatever historical reasons it became part of the core of the West, and not China, where Philosophy had different partners. (Exactly what that philosophic matrix at the core of pan-Chinese culture looked like is something I'm just starting to get into now; any enlightened commenters are welcome to point me in the right direction)

However, Taiwan is a Pacific Rim island nation of high-speed-rail-linked cities and a globally significant economy. While fascinating cultural links all the way back to China's earliest history can be observed, and those sometimes influence the direction to which technology is employed (did you know an annual sea goddess pilgrimage following the symbolic transfer of an important idol between two temples in different towns has its own app in the iStore?), certainly people have no trouble recognizing that whether you are building a bridge or writing software, A cannot be non-A at the same time and in the same sense.

So what makes religion different? Why can Taiwanese people happily devote themselves to mutually irreconcilable faith traditions while Westerners have for centuries turned a respectfully critical eye to their own religious belief and expected faith to conform to logic at some basic level, be able to defend itself with reason, and even struggle a bit when accepting concepts in scripture (like the Trinity) which stretch human logic to a point where we must be content to leave a well-evidenced signpost pointing to things beyond our ken?

Some Enlightenment from G.K.Chesterton

I have had some ideas about this rumbling around as I maintain a busy ministry and outreach schedule in our community, but the clouds parted and a ray of light illuminated this particular enigma as I was reading G.K.Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" this past week.

You wish you could rock a fedora -and- eyeglass chain with this kind of gravitas

Chesterton was devoting a good deal of time to analyzing prechristian paganism, both its beauty and its ugliness; the tacit recognition of a Creator hidden behind all the local gods and longing for beauty common to all people, and the perversion and violence into which it inevitably descends. As this discussion began to turn towards the coming of Christ, he made this remark:

"Certainly the pagan does not disbelieve like an atheist, any more than he believes like a Christian. He feels the presence of powers about which he guesses and invents."

This was interesting, because one thing I had noticed about local religion in Taiwan is that compared to any monotheistic faith, a lot of it can be made up as you go along. The things you aren't supposed to change are because of the weight of tradition, not because the gods have left instructions demanding it be done in one particular way, and innovation can even be seen as a sign of sincerity, like how in addition to the traditional paper spirit money, some people burn paper credit cards or even ipads to honor ancestral spirits. But I could have shouted with excitement as Chesterton continued with lines any Christian wanting to work in a pre-christian culture ought to be made to memorize:

"The substance of all such paganism may be summarised thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all. It is vital to view of all history that reason is something separate from religion even in the most rational of these civilisations. It is only as an afterthought, when such cults are decadent or on the defensive, that a few Neo-Platonists or a few Brahmins are found trying to rationalise them, and even then only by trying to allegorise them. But in reality the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in the sea of Christendom. Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers.

This was the singular point, that no westerners in Taiwan have ever mentioned in related discussions these past several years.

I had been baffled by the lack of any felt need to involve reason in belief, and even more baffled when people pressed for an explanation simply chose at random anything they could come up with, because I was coming from Christendom. It was precisely that idea that there is The Truth (with the Way and the Life) that is precious and must be determined and lived for, vs. the pagan idea that there is one Higher World which doesn't dictate the terms of your approach but is indeed that mountaintop to which any sincere path can lead.
The Bible was given to us precisely so that we wouldn't need to merely imagine what God might be like, but could know the essential parts we'd a) never be able to discover on our own, and b) having made guesses, never have a way to know how right we were. We'd be stuck permanently at Romans 1, never getting farther than the basic idea of God to grasp at, without any details. The Bible is a threat to, and viewed unfavorably by, many people because they don't -want- those details. Murky is nice, because murky doesn't demand anything of you.

Two Initial Take-aways:

I will be wanting to develop this idea further, and I pray that some more fruitful models of gospel articulation in Taiwan will result from it. In the mean time, here are two practical things we can take away from Chesterton's piercingly accurate observation:

1. For Taiwan: Pagan/Pre-christian religious people are approaching the divine fundamentally in an imaginative way, even if some imaginations have become codified in long-standing tradition. I very quickly saw that apologetic/reasoned argument-style approaches were of almost no help in Taiwan whatsoever, except for very specific demographics of people; now that makes a great deal of sense, and I understand why there is no "doctrine"--if it's not being made up as people go along now, it's a tradition that someone came up with at some point in the past. (This doesn't include "real" Buddhism, which is different, but that is less common in Taiwan, though people feel free to borrow concepts or traditions from it for the very reasons stated above)

Gospel work in Taiwan should recognize that people are approaching religion with "sincere imagination" that is not subjected to logic because it wouldn't make sense to. This meshes perfectly with a growing, undefinable intuition I've felt lately that what Taiwan needs is not more apologetics but something like a natively Taiwanese Narnia--something to capture people's religious imagination in a way that points to Christ.

2. For America: The post-christian is the pre-pagan. This idea (common in America now too) that the Bible or Christianity is oppressive because it denies people the use of their imagination when approaching the divine is an essentially pagan objection. It makes no sense to a Christian because it's like saying dictionaries are oppressive because they deny people the ability to imagine how a word ought to be spelled. (Which, of course, some people now say as well.) But the idea that Christianity is oppressive because of attitudes toward gender issues or anything else is really a related issue; for progressives, humanity should be allowed to feel its way forward with imaginative sincerity into the darkness of relative truth. (Finally the perennial popularity of John Lennon's ditty of deconstruction "Imagine" begins to make sense...)

By contrast, Christians claiming the light of unchanging Truth has already been given to mankind puts the lie to this entire quest for crowd-sourced truth. But the leaders of that quest and their devoted followers prefer and insist on darkness, because it lets them imagine reality as they like, and hate light because it forces them to confront reality. Schroedinger's Jesus might not demand they leave everything and follow Him, if we don't open the box. So then, the so-called progressive movement in the US is in various ways a progression indeed: out of post-christianity into a new age of paganism. This now occurs, however, in a culture where Christianity has deeply and permanently altered the ideascape. The Enemy is working hard to scrub these Biblical concepts out of the Western marketplace of ideas, but they are memes which don't die easily.

I look forward to seeing what else comes out of this amazing book. If you haven't read The Everlasting Man by Chesterton, I strongly encourage it. The Kindle version is only $1 on Amazon right now.

Sharing the Gospel in Taiwan - Cultural Access Points

Over the past couple of months we've been looking at some of the difficulties, challenges, and potential miscommunications that arise when trying to share the gospel in East Asia, and specifically Taiwan. You can see the deep cultural differences evident in the way people look at the natural/supernatural world, how they approach religion, and even the very different ideas we might have when talking about what we had thought was the exact same basic concept. (a straight line is just a straight line, right? Not always..)
But today I want to share a little about certain aspects of the gospel I've been discovering that are not inherently difficult for people to understand in Taiwan specifically, and in East Asia in general, and in fact may be quite the opposite- aspects of the gospel message that Taiwanese people are often interested in and willing to accept compared to people in the West. The gospel is a stumbling block, but it is also good news, and different parts of the message of the gospel are going to sound like stumbling blocks and good news to different cultures.

1. Breaking Down Generalizations

Let me say first, when we say "X-country's people are like this," or even "Y subculture's rules of scene are that," we're making a generalization. Stereotyping is what we call taking this too far, but generalizing is part of life; not every ripe strawberry is red, but it's useful and not misleading to say that strawberries are red. (Popular culture has taken this to a rather absurd place in the US in recent years, shouting down anyone who calls strawberries red and filling our media with stories about non-red strawberries, but that's a subject for another day...)

Taiwanese culture as of this writing generally lacks a delirious compulsion to deny demonstrably obvious reality, though the problems of the West are all here to some degree along with the local ones. At the same time, Taiwan is a very diverse place. Most mountainous regions are, since the mountains are not an insurmountable obstacle but do make travel inconvenient and pose something of a psychological barrier as well. Add to that Taiwan's rich and multi-layered history, with colonizations and various waves of immigration, and you end up with a population of 23 million people with a vast range of family histories and traditions.

So when I draw contrasts between Taiwan and the West, it must be said that 1) quite a number of Taiwanese people, mostly younger but not necessarily, would look at the world from a fairly Western viewpoint as well. They themselves neither know nor take the trouble to preserve a working understanding of "old-style" traditional Chinese culture or longstanding local traditions, and would consider themselves modern rational people with a scientific outlook on life, and not believe in reincarnation, ancestral spirits, ghosts, or anything like that. (Although what imaginings bring a cold sweat when they hear a weird noise at 1AM are probably rather different from those of a Westerner in the same situation. East or West, we are not so far from our roots as we suppose.)

We should also note that 2) as I mentioned in the earlier post on religion, there is remarkable religious diversity in Taiwan as well, and sharing the gospel is going to be a different prospect depending on who you're talking to. I plan to do a post in the future which suggests some differences in approach based on the worldview/beliefs of each of the major religious traditions in Taiwan, today will just be an overview.

2. General Common Ground

 

In most corners of the world, if you tell someone that there was once a holy man named Jesus, and He taught that we should love each other, they're going to say "yes, what he said is right", not "that's ridiculous, he didn't know what he was talking about." The world has all kinds of people, some incredibly different from each other, but in the end we're all people created in God's image, and there is revealed wisdom which all humanity shares. The gospel is a stumbling block, but it is also good news.

 The gospel is a stumbling block, but if we are speaking the truth in love, can we be content to merely throw out something which people can't understand, tell them to "take it or leave it," and consider ourselves to have "done our job"? Unfortunately I have met those for whom it really did seem like just a job.They knew we had a duty to share the gospel, and so they did, like a vacuum cleaner salesperson who is assigned a certain number of houses to visit.

So my contention is not that we should only share the "nice sounding" or "culturally acceptable" parts of the gospel. For that is called "false teaching," dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in scripture. We must present the whole truth, which does not change. But that doesn't mean our communication methods should reflect the modern age conception of people as cookie cutter products which simply require finding the one perfect method which can then be universally applied with maximum effort and minimal thought.

Paul certainly did not preach a cookie cutter message; we see from numerous verses that he did his best to reach different local cultures and even different churches in ways that were appropriate to their context.
So I submit that if we view it both as a calling and an act of love to share the hope we have, and not just a duty, then we will make every effort to bridge the gap of misunderstanding which varies depending on the culture.

3. Access Points for the Gospel in East Asia 

 

A famous missionary to Taiwan, perhaps the only missionary to Taiwan who became a significant part of the Taiwanese cultural consciousness, was a Canadian missionary named George Mackay. Mackay was the first Presbyterian missionary to northern Taiwan, and is remembered in Taiwan for his long black beard and how he loved Taiwan and its people. It is said that he often began a gospel presentation with the scriptural command for children to respect their parents, which was praised by his audience as true teaching.

Scripture is clear that children should obey and respect their parents, something which has been all but lost in our child-deifying postmodern culture. If you want to reach a Confucian culture, Scripture's teaching about honoring authority and relationships between people are a great place to start. And that's where we'll start:

Cultural access points of Scripture (not in any specific order):

Showing the proper honor to one's father

1. Honoring parents/authority:

For older people, feeling beset by a young generation who was raised mostly without discipline (this seems to happen every generation, but there may be more truth to the accusation now than ever), the Bible's call for children to obey and honor their parents may not only ring true but come as something of a relief. "Ah, we knew that was sound teaching but these young people won't listen." At the same time, younger people who have a well-developed sense of "xiào shùn" ("filial piety," a rare case in which the Chinese looks like the easier term) may connect with Biblical teaching regarding their duty to their parents as well, and furthermore be able to reassure their parents that while becoming a Christian does mean they can't worship deceased parents, it doesn't mean they can't honor them as responsible children.

East vs. West: In terms of attitudes towards authority, in East Asia the deep-rooted desire for personal freedom and the idea of righteous rebellion against tyranny you see in America is not very apparent (Although you can see it increasingly in young people in Taiwan. Setting aside views of domestic politics one way or another, one can't avoid getting chills hearing tens of thousands of Taiwanese youth all singing A Song of Angry Men from Les Mis in Taiwanese at a massive protest against the government). Traditionally, the greatest evil is "disorder" and a disruption of the proper relationships between people and people, perhaps the principle domain of Confucianism, and between people and the natural order of things, the primary focus of the non-animistic Asian religions.So "rebels" are committing the very grave sin of attacking the heaven-ordained natural order, similar to what we saw in Europe prior to the diminishing of monarchies and rise of nationalism.

2. The Genealogies:

Speaking of parents... While they may not speak to Taiwanese as dramatically as to some of the world's tribal peoples (I've heard stories from Bible translators of tribes accepting the gospel because of the genealogies), don't assume you can just skip over them. Depending on how traditionally-minded your listener/s are, the genealogies can provide some weightiness to the gospel by demonstrating that 1) it's not a recent story (The Roman Empire was concurrent with the Han dynasty in China, a long time ago but by no means the depths of time), and 2) the Bible shows honor to ancestors too. One lady we are witnessing to was pleasantly surprised to find that the Bible gives such an important place to ancestors; Taiwanese believers often assume that because Christians are not allowed to worship their ancestors, that it's a religion which does not honor family or especially the memory of departed family members. It's important to demonstrate that, while Western habits and conventions vary, scripturally speaking this is not the case.

East vs. West: Covering the genealogies can be a great way to demonstrate that even if we ourselves find a list of ancestors less than compelling, scripture itself locates them in places of honor. Many Taiwanese mistakenly believe Christianity to be "the American religion"  (I routinely hear kids ask if Jesus is an American), so hearing generation after generation going back into antiquity will provide the authenticity for them that goes over the head of a nation not yet 250 years old and full of immigrants. Note: Some Taiwanese may find them as irrelevant as Americans do, you just have to try and see. It's hard to guess who is thinking in a traditional way behind the surface of their demographic or subculture.

Worshippers at Longshan Temple in Taipei

3. A Polytheistic Context

Taiwanese society is polytheistic, and worshipping idols is a ubiquitous practice even among the younger generations. (High school and college students flock to temples to pray and offer incense to the God of Luck for their exams, for example) Reading the Bible one often has a "a long time ago, far far away" feeling, because it's describing societies and cultures so much unlike our own in the US/the West. Taiwan is what a society like those looks like 2000 years later, without the revolutionary changes and upheavals that occurred in the West during those years and ushered in the modern era. (Or the revolutionary changes in China last century. Taiwan preserves old-style Chinese culture in various ways that are rare or lost on the mainland. It's postmodern technology meets old Asia; really a fascinating place to visit, let alone live.)

Perhaps I should be more bold, but personally I do not evangelize by attacking the idols as false religion. I believe that if anyone should do that, it would be our local Taiwanese brothers and sisters. Coming in as a Western outsider, I ask more questions than I offer criticism or condemnation. I want to bridge cultural divides and discuss the core of their belief system, not stand back and lob cruise missiles at their world view.

But one reason I don't feel it's necessary or appropriate for me to do this, is that scripture already does. The entirety of the Bible was written in the midst of idol-worshipping cultures, nations, and empires, and it has a lot to say about those idols and the people who worship them, much of it not very polite. There are passages like the middle of Isaiah 44, for example, which positively drip with sarcasm at the absurdity of idol worship (Imagine cooking your barbecue on a gas grill then worshiping the other half of the propane, that's something like what verses 16 and 17 are saying). Or Elijah vs. the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, one of my favorite Old Testament stories. That part where the priests get desperate and start cutting themselves until the blood flowed? It's more rare now, but that commonly happened in Taiwan at important temple ceremonies and sometimes still does today. Studying the Bible, Taiwanese people can read these passages and others like them for themselves and decide what they think. I believe my job is to guide them to the scriptures and let the Spirit do this work directly. Of course I am happy to answer any questions they have, but I can only answer as someone who has studied the scripture just as they are now doing, and is merely some years ahead of them in that process.

East vs West: A lot of the Bible makes far more sense when one has lived in Asia. I recall many times, discussing the frequent references to idolatry all throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well, having lessons like: "What are the idols in your life? Do you sacrifice your time to the idol of other people's opinions?" Abstractly speaking, of course we have these kinds of idols in our lives, things that are more important to us than God, so that's not a misuse of the concept. But when one is surrounded by actual gold-veneered statues and people putting food in front of them and carrying them around, so much of the Old (and New) Testament comes alive. That's part of the ironic tragedy of Taiwanese thinking that Christianity is a Western religion irrelevant to them: It was written by people living in cultures far more similar to that of modern Taiwan than to our own in the West.

4. The Trinity and other confusing concepts

The doctrine of God's triune nature is not necessarily a connection point for the gospel in the sense that it leads people to accept the truth of it, but I bring it up because there is a big difference between how it's perceived in the East vs. the West. For example, one day I was talking to a good friend, and the subject of whether Jesus and God meant the same thing came up. I mentioned the Trinity, but said maybe she found the concept too confusing. She wondered why I would think that, so I said people often thought it sounded contradictory. She asked if I meant because Westerners always insisted that things couldn't be different and the same at the same time? God is three, and He's also one. No problem!

I was somewhat surprised by this, but I shouldn't have been. In East Asia religious truths are typically seen as mysteries to be understood (or not), not as propositions to be logically parsed. There is the assumption that some things will be esoteric and confusing, and without those it's not really a religion.

I can't go so far as to say that the presence of "mysteries" in our faith -things we as believers don't fully grasp or understand either- actually serve as proof of the gospel in East Asia, but it's possible. I have heard it suggested that a religion in which everything is nailed down and parsed out precisely simply doesn't fly in the East, where people know better, but further research will be required to see if that's true in a general way in Taiwan. But at least it can be said, you are far less likely to face antagonism in the Western atheist sense, scouring your faith for any contradictions with science or logic, and more likely to face challenges from more surprising directions, like one student hearing me talk about one of Jesus' miracles and claiming his father could call spirits into himself and do the same thing.

The Sermon on the Mount - a painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch

5. The Person and teachings of Jesus Christ

The idea of a "Great Teacher" carries significant weight in Taiwan. We on this side of salvation know Jesus as our Savior and King, but it is not wrong that He was a great and wise teacher as well. Chinese culture has a long list of great teachers, and they are exalted and even worshipped in some cases. (Teacher in this case doesn't mean "math teacher," but could include it; it is someone who has both knowledge and wisdom and from whom if you learn humbly and attentively you can receive the benefit of both.) I have found that the more people hear of Jesus' teaching in Taiwan, the more they tend to like him, and I have begun to wonder if we conservative evangelicals have not found ourselves in the position of overemphasizing doctrine and "concepts" in our evangelism, and underemphasizing the person of Christ Himself. In the end, we are not subscribing to a system but surrendering to and worshipping a man who is the true Servant-Teacher-Prophet-Priest-King-Savior-God. Understanding Jesus in any of the prior roles can be a step towards believing on Him redemptively as the last two, so long as one does take the necessary following steps.

East vs West: People in the U.S., in my experience, typically use the "Great Teacher" label as a polite dodge. No normal person can read what Jesus wrote and accuse Him of being either evil or foolish, yet many balk at His claim to be God, so they want to give Him a respectful title that falls short of that. (C.S.Lewis' trilemma is an attempt to point out the logical inconsistency of doing so. Of course very, very few people come to Christ via demonstrations of logic, so most people simply skirt around the trilemma by saying Jesus never claimed to be God, and it was his followers who inserted those claims into his recorded remarks)

Taiwan is a bit different. This label is a term of great respect, and doesn't preclude worship. A Great Teacher can certainly be divine and a god, and in fact if you are remembered as a historically noteworthy Chinese teacher I'd your chances of being worshipped by at least a few people are reasonably high. Of course recognizing Jesus as the God involves an understanding of the fundamental nature of God as He reveals Himself in Scripture, which is an entirely separate question and difficult hurdle for many Taiwanese to overcome. Therefore you frequently end up with situations where Taiwanese become convinced of Jesus' divinity and begin worshipping Him -alongside- their other gods; in the past I have even seen an icon of Jesus in one of the most famous Taiwanese temples.

6. Chinese-Jewish Cultural Connections

I can and probably will later do a whole post on this; there are fascinating cultural links and connections between ancient Chinese and Jewish cultures. There is an ethnic minority in China that preserves Hebrew words in their local dialect, there is the Chinese custom of putting red paper on their door frames for Chinese New Year, a practice connected with an ancient story regarding a monster which devoured humans, from which the red on their door frames could protect them (strongly reminiscent of the first Passover), and there are Chinese characters themselves which contain some interesting examples of scriptural metaphors. (The most famous example being that the character for "righteousness" is composed of a character which can mean "lamb" placed over the character for "me") While some of these may be "coincidences," other seem to be Hebrew cultural memes that accompanied Jewish travelers along the Silk Road from the Middle East to China.

These connection points demonstrate that Chinese culture already contains some of the ideas and content of the Biblical account and Christian teachings. This is extremely helpful because for people who consider themselves part of the greater Chinese cultural sphere, often the most important question about a new idea is whether it can be considered Chinese or not (Sometimes "Taiwanese," in Taiwan, depending on the individual). If not, it's an "outside idea." These may be readily accepted in business or other spheres, but as in all parts of the world, religion is a deep and identity-level issue. (In the West it's almost the opposite; people would need to tread carefully when suggesting we adopt "foreign business practices" in place of the usual, but many people outside the Church are fascinated by "Asian spirituality" and don't feel threatened by it.)

Having learned about God and believing in Him, we see that He is the God of all creation. For someone in Chinese culture hearing about Him for the first time, and knowing it's a religious question, an instinctive question is "is this something relevant to me?" For people who are interested in history and their own culture, these kinds of ancient cultural connections give some relevance and bring the gospel a little more into their court, as it were.

People tend to go overboard with these, so it's important
to note that the "lamb" character can be used for anything
like a sheep, goat, or gazelle. The point is not how perfect
a gospel analogy it may be, but that it's a useful connection point

4. Summary

We'll stop here, but I hope that as I continue to share the gospel here I will have an increasingly good grasp on cultural access points for the gospel in Taiwan, and can improve on this post in a "Part 2" somewhere down the line. In the mean time I hope this encourages anyone who does ministry here in Taiwan or anywhere nearby, that although at times it feels like the cultural and worldview gap are insurmountable, God has not left us without a cultural legacy of connection points back to the gospel. While the gospel can never not be a stumbling block, we can shine the light of truth in ways that are culturally relevant and more likely to leave people interested to hear more than deciding it's got nothing to do with them.

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.

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.