5 Years in Taiwan: 5 Missionary Lessons Learned

(This is the first post in a 2-part series. This one is focused on missions, and the second post is more focused on personal lessons and realizations that have come with my time on the field)

A couple weeks ago marked the 5th anniversary of my arrival in Taiwan for long-term service. I was so busy I almost forgot about it altogether, and didn't do anything special to celebrate the occasion, but it's still a noteworthy date for me. Each of the 5 years here has been quite different, and come with its share of surprises, disappointments, and small successes. In this entry I'd like to share some things I've learned as a missionary over those years.

1. People in other metacultures think differently from you (in different ways than you think they do)

I spent a lot of time reading and researching the culture of Taiwan before I came to do full-time ministry here. I also had lots of short-term experience, probably quite a bit more than the average missionary coming into a culture long term. All that was only very partial preparation for understanding the different worldviews and ways of thinking that are prevalent in Taiwan, however.

What I found was that understanding a metacultural (metacultures like "Western" "Islamic" "East Asian" overly greatly diverse individual cultures to be sure, yet there are also meta-level commonalities and core values, and deeper differences from each other) level difference in thought is much more complicated than simply taking the way you would think about something and substituting a different cultural priority or core value. That's because the differences are not always parallel. People don't think as you think, just with different habits and priorities; you may run into people of greatly different cultures that you "click" with very naturally due to similarities in the way you think, and you may encounter people whose entire way of thinking seems to be a mystifying black box, with what comes out not seeming to be connected to what goes in.

My girlfriend and I have coined a useful term (useful for us, at least) in Mandarin for this idea, 想法法. (The way of your way of thinking) This differs between different personality types too, which is an added layer of complication beyond cultural differences. Using the Myers-Briggs types, for example, there are scenarios where a German or Korean ISTJ would react in very similar ways and "get" each other's way of thinking, where befriending the Korean ISTJ or a Korean ENFP early on in one's move to Korea might result in wildly different ideas about "how Korean people think."

So it's not as simple as saying "In this situation, I would be prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem but a Chinese businessman might be prioritizing indirect communication to save face." That's not wrong, but it doesn't go deep enough, because you are thinking of it as prioritizing clear communication to solve the problem, but the Chinese businessman, while probably aware of his own desire to save face, does not necessarily think of it as prioritizing indirect communication, just talking as one does in these situations. Furthermore he has his own personality, and in the complicated interaction of cultural worldviews and communication styles with individual personality and past experiences, it's hard to say which is the "head" and which is the "neck."

All that is to say, it's wise to understand cultural core values, and also wise to understand they're just one important piece of the puzzle. You want a fuller picture to navigate by, when at all possible.

2. Sometimes what we call culture fatigue is really environmental fatigue (and sometimes it's just fatigue)

More or less all long-term missionaries go through a stage called culture fatigue, which isn't the "shock" of early arrival but when those troublesome bits of the culture that are especially tiring or problematic for you or in your particular ministry context start to wear you down over time.

I've noticed, though, that the parts of "life here" that I find especially tiring are generally only partially related to the culture. For example, as I write this, New Year's Eve (Dec 31) was last night. There were some scattered fireworks and firecrackers, but the rain mostly kept things down. But if Chinese New Year's Eve this February falls on a good clear night, it will be firecracker armageddon. That one night of noise is cultural, and sleep is more or less impossible before 2 or 3AM.

But that's only the one night. Getting to sleep any night at my old apartment could be tough, because of the cars or motorcycles accelerating over the bridge near my apartment. In the U.S. there might be some rules about mufflers and things which would make a slight difference in noise levels, but not much. Essentially it's not a cultural problem at all, it's because my ministry area is near the edge of a metropolis of 7 million people. Living near a main road in a major U.S. city wouldn't be that different.

Many things we put down to culture shock are like that. It's not the culture, it's that as missionaries we have mostly chosen to live in a different environment than the ones we grew up in, or would choose to live in as adults. There are aspects of that environment that are rewarding and fascinating, and some that are inconvenient or exhausting.

Beyond that, I've noticed that when I'm exhausted, I'm in good company here. It's not as if everyone here has things good and I'm the outsider forced to struggle. Life is hard for many people, and Taipei is full of people working long hours for never-rising wages. The rampant insomnia, seasonal pollution, sometimes overcrowded metro stations, and capriciously steamy hot or clammy cold weather are all things we face together. It is true that I gave up a comparatively comfortable and less exhausting life in the States to live here and do what I do, but I knew that would be the case, and my life here is full of conveniences and comfort unknown to missionaries here decades ago, or in many other parts of the world.

So now when I'm exhausted, I don't think "I need a break from Taiwan," because it's not really about what's different about life here, and everyone else is tired too. What I really enjoy is a break in Taiwan, to do those things that made me fall in love with the place to begin with.

3. The Church may be part of the problem, but it's also the point (and the only lasting progress)

The Church is an easy target sometimes. With 2000 years of history and immeasurable impact on the world, the power and influence that accumulates in the earthly shadow cast by the kingdom of God has attracted many sinful people who did terrible things in the name of Christ, let alone the fact that believers with careers that place them in the public eye often come under heavy spiritual attack and commit grievous sins.

All this is fodder for those who want to commit the genetic fallacy and tar the Church with the sins of her individual saints (plus pretenders and wolves in sheep's clothing), as if middle-schoolers failing or cheating on their math tests should cast some kind of doubt on the legitimacy of number theory.

That being said, the Church in any locale has her problems and dysfunctions, and local churches can abound with them. Taiwanese churches have their share as well, both systemic problems sometimes accidentally introduced by missionaries doing the best they knew to do years ago, and problems in individual churches where people ought to do better, but have other priorities, just like sinful but redeemed people in any part of the world. (If I can name two examples of problems I see in churches here, one is a reliance on materials or programs from outside of Taiwan; plenty of both are available from Korean and Western churches, and little to none of it was developed in Taiwan for the needs of Taiwan. Simply translating it to Chinese doesn't make it locally effective. Another problem is that there are too many very small churches with a pastor or minister who can barely keep things going, and a congregation--often grandparents plus a few dutiful children or grandchildren--that expects all spiritual work to be done by the pastor, while most young people flock to a few large churches with better resources and an effective student ministry. Neither of these problems are anyone's "fault," but they both contribute to gridlock in effective church growth here)

When attempting to make any plan work smoothly, it's typically best to involve as few people as possible. When attempting to make any plan work smoothly when working cross-culturally with churches and church leadership, well, just don't expect that. If it didn't develop organically in the churches themselves, it probably means trying to change church culture and habits. It's not impossible, and there are wonderful success stories, but it can be tough and messy at the best of times. I've even see cultural insiders with good reputations trying to pitch ideas and completely failing because they didn't understand the culture and leadership attitude of that particular group of churches.

Due to all this, there are times when missions organizations find it easiest to work outside the domain of the local church, doing their own thing and answering to their own leadership, and interacting with churches when it's part of the strategy, or when conditions are favorable. Sometimes this happens automatically with apostolic-type church planting, in new areas where there are few or no churches to cooperate with. Perhaps too frequently, church planting is done apostolic-style because of the churches nearby.

While it's true that some churches simply aren't ready, willing, or able to cooperate effectively, we must never lose sight of the fact that the local church is the Body of Christ, incarnated in a particular area. When missionaries leave, whether to another field, retirement, or to permanently cast off the perishable, the local church, however it is, remains. One of our top priorities should be figuring out the best way to leave it healthier than we found it, yet not in ways that introduce dependency on outside resources.

4. Church planting is less about the plan (and more about the planters)

As we've tried different outreaches and activities for evangelism and to grow this little neighborhood church, two things that have become apparent is that 1) there wasn't a strong plan at the outset on how to plant the church, but also 2) that it wouldn't have mattered much because in our context, so much is based on factors we can't control. What rapidly also became apparent is that church planting is a holistic spiritual challenge that requires experience and discipline in a variety of areas. Neither my local coworker nor I had participated in a church plant before, and the past few years have been... highly instructive.

What became glaringly obvious in hindsight, after some experience, was that our team wasn't diverse enough to tackle evangelizing our neighborhood ad hoc. If you're planning an outreach aimed at families (recognizing that that mainly means moms and kids here, with the occasional dad making an appearance), you need female coworkers who can follow up with the moms that show up, and who have at least some spiritual gifting and preferably a little experience in doing so. As a youngish unmarried man, but also a foreigner here, the people I'm able to follow up with are a more selective group, and not one that typically showed up for the kinds of events and outreach strategies we used.

Temporary additions of short term workers have filled in some of the gaps in our "potential discipleship coverage", but their return home generally saw the people they attracted disperse. With a good impression of our ministry and Christians in general, to be sure, but still absent. As my Taiwanese coworker once sagely remarked, "guanxi doesn't transfer": the relationships you build with people over time can't be transferred to a coworker when it's time to leave just because you were working for a common goal.

Some basic lessons for any new community-based evangelistic ministry emerge:

1. The team should look roughly like who you're trying to reach

(Compatibility for follow-up and future discipleship should be built in, not a happy accident that requires special acts of grace to see)

2. The team should be stable, or have a stable supply of shorter term help

(And have a plan for how their period of service fits into the long term ministry goals)

3. There should be ties to the local church, however local that needs to be

(If your church is the local church, it's still a good idea to reach out to others when applicable)

4. The team should determine which things can be experimented with, and which can't be redone

(Example: Your first outreach event in a neighborhood will leave a lasting impression. People who meet you will talk to other people. Those times and events need more planning to make sure they are in line with important ministry goals, or you'll be making things tougher for yourselves at the start.)

5. We can do this (better)

When I went to seminary, I had the sort of idea that after 2000 years of perusing the same scriptures from every possible angle, what theology could be humanly known had been pretty much worked out (with, of course, various schools of thought on certain doctrines and the meaning of certain scripture passages) and we were going to learn it. What I learned instead was that while the dogmas and central doctrines of the faith have been established since the councils, there is in fact much work to be done. For example, efforts are ongoing to find period manuscripts to help decipher the hapax legomena, the words only mentioned once, to bolster our interpretations of them. The internet has provided a way for people to easily access exegetical tools and communicate biblical knowledge (enabling the promulgation of weird and apocryphal ideas to be sure, but also exposing isolated church communities to basic sound doctrine), and furthermore the task of rightly dividing the Word of God is always a new adventure, since new generations with fresh worldviews and priorities are always being born to learn of and experience God and His unchanging truth for the first time.

I had wondered if missions was not similar; if over hundreds of years of taking the gospel into different cultures, and often over a hundred years of experience in different mission boards and sending agencies, some basic effective gospel strategies and organizational wisdom had been accumulated, and the main difficulty would be the doing of it, the on-the-ground work of learning the language, building the relationships, etc.

Not so. What I found instead is that each wave/generation of missionaries comes with their own backgrounds and preconceptions, and the cultures they go to reach are sometimes changing faster even than their home cultures. (Taiwan is one example. The societal change over 3 generations here has been more like the change over 5 generations in the U.S.) What "worked so well" (I don't use quotation marks to question the truth of the statement) when some missionaries arrived seems bafflingly unfruitful when new missionaries arrive decades later, because it's a new generation witnessing to a new generation. The wine needs to be transferred to new wineskins, at times and frequencies and in ways that only wisdom, experience, and careful observation can determine well, and those things don't often line up in the joyful and stressful confusion of cross-cultural life and work. Sometimes highly motivated missionaries do great work for the kingdom, then retire, leaving a hole which cannot really be filled (and too often there was no plan or attempt to do so).

These things can't really be changed, not to mention that much kingdom fruit can only be seen when the Spirit begins to do the work we can't; so many "successful strategies" are merely a case of a mighty wind filling all sails faithfully raised, not that that particular design of sail is the one that should be used everywhere. There is a very frustrating lack of reproducibility for anyone with a business or technical background. It seems common to revert to that mentality, and seek shelter in those kinds of strategies and ministries where results can be reliably obtained through human effort.

But on the other hand, many changes in the world and society are not detrimental to the missionary task, yet missionaries have not yet, or only just, begun to make use of them. To keep up our theme of this post, here are 5 examples:

A. Use the powerful language learning tools that exist

The days of landing in a new country daunted by the prospect of a new language and enduring a stressful and possibly tearful ordeal acquiring the new language, "like drinking from a fire hose" as many vividly describe the process, in many cases can and ought to be over.

I met many exchange students from China while in seminary in Dallas (many of whom found Christ and joined churches while there, praise God). I was surprised at how good some of their English was; it wasn't just a large memorized vocabulary, but they had a strong and natural command of conversational English. I asked them how their English had gotten so good before they came to the U.S., and a few replied matter-of-factly that they'd done video chat classes with teachers in the U.S. for a while before leaving China.

So many tools are now available for widely-spoken languages that once missionaries are officially in the preparation phase for their mission, there's not really any reason not to start learning the languages then. In a new environment and culture, there are so many other challenges to face and lessons to learn that letting the full brunt of new language acquisition hit at that time is best avoided if possible. These days it can be possible.

I recognize there are two major exceptions to this: 1) When you are transferring from one field to another. Learning a language at the outset when highly motivated is one thing; adding another language on top of that one while transitioning from one busy ministry field to a less familiar one is another. 2) When you need to learn a local language, not a global one. That still doesn't stop you from video chatting with locals months before you leave, but it means fewer materials are available, and preparation for distance learning needs to be set up ahead of time.

However what I'm arguing for is more a change in attitude. Build language learning into the process of Going, and decrease its status as a barrier to people wanting to serve. I have been told that, being at least somewhat gifted with languages, I'm underestimating the stress and challenge it is for others. I understand that it's not the same for everyone, since for example as a naturally reserved introvert making new friends cross-culturally is fairly challenging for me, where it's easy for some others. But that just underlines my point; if learning languages doesn't come naturally for many people, why not make full use of the wide range of tools modern technology places at our disposal?

B. A Culture of "discipling Your replacements"

One way to reduce the impact of experienced missionaries leaving big gaps in their wake, would be if a Timothy or a bunch of them were already there when it was time for Paul to go. This is certainly no easy task, and would require a massive time and energy investment. I also know that some missionaries serve in capacities that would make this difficult. However we see both Jesus and Paul using a strategy not of "taking time away from their own ministry to disciple others", but of taking people with them to do what they do.

If a culture of discipling and mentoring (a loaded word, there's probably a better one) as an essential component of ministry was built into our missions mentality, we wouldn't view it as "taking time away from our primary ministry responsibilities" to disciple, but would always be seeking friends to minister alongside us, and discipleship would happen through that, not in spite of or apart from it. 

I believe 5 years in is not too early to be thinking about this, and it's something I want to work on in 2019. If I had to leave in 5 more years, who would step in to continue the work? Or would I simply leave, taking not only the accumulated knowledge and experience of those years with me, but leaving an empty hole in the midst of the relationships I'd invested in during those years?

What if instead I had already been inviting both newer missionaries and younger people to work alongside me for years already, who can build those relationships as I do (and perhaps faster than I do), and step in to lead those ministries when I'm not available? (And be ready to lead their own) It seems worthwhile to make this a priority to a far greater degree than I've personally seen on the field, both in and out of church.

C. Millennials are natural missionaries, but need leadership

My generation, especially its younger cohort, is continually decried as fragile and unmotivated. They have left the Church in droves, and seem to have an inexplicable lack of interest in avidly pursuing the American dream. What does motivate them, to a large degree, are causes they perceive to be worth investing one's time and energy in. It grieves me that the Church missed this. At a time when an idealistic generation was growing up with the connectivity of the internet ingrained in their psyche and a peak of post-WWII resources behind them, the Church said something along the lines of: "Sit tight, we've pretty much got this Church thing figured out smoothly. Just keep showing up for the sake of showing up and some day (very far in the future), all this can be yours."

Meanwhile the World said: "Hey, young, inexperienced idealists who want to make your mark on the world. Have you noticed how unfair the world is? Let's fight injustice together!" Secular ideology provided a cause that seemed worth fighting for. The Church at first reflexively avoided this thrown-down gauntlet, and nowadays seems to be belatedly trying to gain credibility by jumping on the social justice bandwagon. (It's like much of the Church lives in a bubble 5-10 years thick. But I digress.) But it nearly lost a generation in the process, at least for now. (Only time will tell what older millennials will decide to do)

What many Millennials seem quite willing to do at any time, is reject American dream-style materialism in favor of joining causes that seem more important, on becoming the change they want to see. That's one component of a missionary spirit, but so much of it got wasted on whatever internet cause de jour or social marxist movement took the place of the soul-transforming calling that Christ has laid upon every believer. There is no power that can make the world a better place than regenerated souls on their way to another world while focused on His kingdom. Why were we not led by mature believers into that perilously joyful adventure? Is it too late to start now? (I don't think so)

D. Try more field-based recruitment

Missionaries tend to have some pretty good stories. We can also explain exactly what we're up to and how we need help, in ways that are tough for sending organizations or churches to do secondhand. Why leave most of the work of recruiting up to them? I know different organizations have different structures and procedures, but it seems natural for those who have Gone to invite others to join them in the good work that's going on.

A culture of fields or ministry focus areas keeping in better touch with their supporting churches and reaching out to others not merely to meet support requirements, but with the faithful expectation that God will lead some people who hear to come get involved with the work, might change the picture of shrinking numbers of missionaries in many fields.

Some fields in my organization have done this with success, but it took a concentrated effort and it also takes a certain number of missionaries involved to become "self-sustaining" in that sense. I believe in the Church of the 2020's, this will be an increasingly effective strategy, as it's likely that the culture in the West will continue changing in ways that make sending agency's work (and perhaps survival) harder, not easier.

E. Make it less... dramatic (?) at the outset

I am definitely speaking as a computer engineer-turned-missionary at this point, but I feel it's important to point out that the nature of long-work missionary work has a pragmatic quality to it. Yes, we seek to be all things to all people to win some, in cultures very different from our birth cultures, and it's a work only the Spirit can do in the hearts of those we seek to reach. Yes, I was "called" to Taiwan in that traditional sense that I wouldn't say is necessary to come serve God cross-culturally but definitely makes it easier in certain ways. (On the spectrum of "anxiously figuring out if you're heading in the right direction" vs. "gritting your teeth and enduring when it's tough" it pushes things much further toward the latter)

However, while a calling from God or deep conviction that inspires us to service can both push people out of the comfortable ruts of their normal lives and provide motivation when times are tough, emphasizing it so strongly and hyping up (for lack of a more respectful term) that decision to forsake everything and go to the ends of the earth, also throws up a huge barrier, one that may have been more appropriate for ages when missions agencies were focused on weeding out the unqualified from among their many applicants, not trying hard to connect with enough willing hearts and get them on the field to keep whole mission field areas from having to close up shop from lack of missionaries to continue the good work.

My own journey to the mission field certainly involved those moments of deep conviction to make the tough decisions to get here, but it was also partly inspired by visiting Taiwan and hearing missionaries share about very accomplishable tasks and needs, getting a more concrete idea of what actually needed to be done. My thinking before visiting any missionaries abroad was that I wasn't spiritual enough (or extroverted enough) to be a missionary. After visiting Taiwan and learning more, it became more a question of "Oh, there's a lot of good work for God's kingdom that needs to be done over there. It sounds like something I could learn to do... if I dare." The daring part is where some dramatic stories of God's leading and providence come in.

The World we live in provides a variety of well-defined life path options. Maximizing the comfort of your life, achieving noteworthy success, becoming the head of a happy and prosperous family, etc. As with so many things in the Church, it would be much more effective if instead of merely pointing at what the world offers/promotes and saying "missions means sacrificing all that," we actually cast a positive vision too, of what is gained and how deeply meaningful missionary life can be.

Missionary life is almost impossibly difficult at times, but life is like that anyway, even sometimes for people who spend most of their lives trying to avoid those kinds of difficulties. What better way to spend one's transient mortal life than in full-time service to your Creator, taking light into dark places, and sharing the beautiful truths of His word and watching lives be transformed by it?

The only things you can take with you to heaven are the friends God reached through you. If that's not a rational reason to jump in and get started in kingdom work, I don't know what is.

Chinese Compliments: Peeling the Cultural Onion

"A Culture is like an Onion!"

The First Layer: Appreciation ("Your Chinese is so good!")

As I continue to live and serve in Taiwan, certain parts of Taiwanese culture I learned at the beginning reveal themselves to be more complicated than they first appeared.

Years ago, during my previous stay in Taiwan, I felt like Taiwanese people were very generous with compliments. People often commented at how I was good at using chopsticks, how my Chinese was impressive, etc. I felt it was just a way to be polite, especially to a guest in their country.

Another missionary commented once that if your Chinese gets really good, you stop getting compliments. His theory was that people stopped thinking of you as struggling to speak the language and needing encouragement, and simply focused on communicating with you, or even that if your Chinese was really good, they would start comparing you to themselves or other native speakers and not feel excessive praise was warranted.

The Second Layer: Realization ("Oh, it's Just Saving Face")

He may have been right, but I think there is something else in play as well. As I think back on the times I've been complimented, sticking to the examples of using chopsticks and speaking Chinese, there are usually two special situations where someone will most frequently offer a compliment (obviously in many parts of the world if you do something well someone might notice and compliment you on it; I am speaking of situations where cultural factors are more obviously at play):

1) You are a foreign stranger
Compared against the average stereotype of a Westerner, any 'waiguoren' in Taiwan who can use chopsticks without dropping things all the time, and speak even a few intelligible sentences in Mandarin, is already ahead of the curve. The bar is typically very low for anyone who "looks like a foreigner" (ethnically non-Asian based on appearance), so you get a free chance to fly high over it and impress someone the first time you meet them. After that they know you, and will probably tone down the compliments as they now expect it from you.

2) You fumbled
As Westerners the first example makes sense. Meeting someone at your work for the first time and witnessing they're fluent in Mongolian or skilled at origami, a compliment might come reflexively. It might not be so special in Mongolia, or Japan, but outside of those countries, and if they aren't from there, it's the kind of accomplishment that naturally garners some praise.

But in this second example of when people compliment you in Taiwan we encounter some significant cultural differences. For me, it began with noticing a funny discrepancy in the times I got compliments, in that often I felt like it came not at a time when I felt particularly fluent in Mandarin or adept at chopsticks, but when I was struggling. I might almost drop a piece of food, or barely manage to get my brain and mouth in sync to get all the right words out to express myself, and it's right then that someone smiles and compliments me on how good my chopstick skills are, or how good I am at speaking Chinese.

It confused me until I remembered the idea of "saving face" in Chinese culture. A lot of politeness that adults show to each other in Taiwan revolves around helping each other to "save face." It's an inheritance from the honor/shame aspect of Chinese culture which is still strongly influential in Taiwan. Saving face can either be positive (something done or said to "give face" to someone, honoring them), or negative (avoiding words or actions that would cause someone to lose face, or incur public dishonor).

Sometimes that looks like what we're familiar with in the West, trying to help someone get through an awkward moment gracefully to spare them embarrassment, or complimenting them in front of others to build them up, but sometimes it can happen in ways that are surprising, or sometimes even irritating, if one doesn't take the extra mental step of remembering what's going on behind the scenes.

[The Books aren't Always Right: While studying up on Chinese culture before coming to Taiwan, I read in a culture book on the topic of saving face that it was normal for people to not react when something was dropped and broken, and not come to help someone pick up what they dropped, in an effort to save them face and pretend they hadn't done anything potentially embarrassing. I can say from experience that neither of these scenarios are so extreme in Taiwan: a number of people will turn around to look if a dish is dropped loudly in a restaurant (but some will smile reflexively, to cover the embarrassment), and someone will often run to help a person who has dropped things, the one being helped typically thanking them profusely. I don't know if the mainland is different, or if that describes Chinese culture decades ago, but rubberneckers are alive and well in any part of the world I've visited thus far...]

So in the case of compliments, then, they are often not compliments per se, but a polite way to get past the awkwardness of a mistake or struggle in performance.

The Third Layer: Understanding ("I Guess that Actually Makes Sense")

Having realized this, I was tempted to be vaguely resentful: so in the end people were not "really" complimenting me, in fact they were doing something nearly the opposite--acknowledging that I'd messed up. From a Western perspective, it's less like an acknowledgement of merit, and more like whipping out febreeze and spraying it around in the awkward silence after someone has a bout of flatulence: in a sense it magnifies exactly the embarrassment the gesture was meant to cover/relieve.

In Chinese culture, however, there is a tacit collective understanding that mistakes or failings which everyone is willing to overlook or graciously cover for are like the tree that falls in the woods with no one around to hear it. No ears, no sound-no acknowledgement, no shame. Everyone covers for each other, if you have a good relationship with them, and the problems don't exist. (Which is one way that sometimes in East Asian cultures small problems can become enormous issues, but that's a topic for a different post)

A similar situation arises with making cultural mistakes, something I blogged about previously. While I typically want to be told when I commit a cultural faux pas, so that I can avoid making the same mistake next time, my friends might try to help me save face by not saying anything. We therefore have a somewhat humorous impasse: to me, being a good friend is telling me what everyone else already knows so I don't keep acting improperly and being the only one who doesn't know it, and to them, being a good friend means pretending I didn't do anything wrong so that it's not awkward. (Friends who understand you are trying to be a student of the culture and are good at explaining those things are very valuable)

This also explains the observation at the beginning, that as one's Chinese improves, the number of compliments you receive for it diminishes. You don't need as many compliments, because you are making fewer mistakes! Like so many things, it only seems counterintuitive until you understand the reasons behind it.

The Fourth Layer: Responding in Kind ("Do Unto Others...")

In the end, when one begins to become more familiar with the reasons behind the way people act, there is always a choice to be made. You can judge the cultural habit, and decide whether you approve or disapprove of it, or you can judge the motive behind it. In this case, trying to help you save face is definitely a friendly action. It's following the Golden Rule; what they would want you to do for them, they are doing for you. And that's the most you can ask of anyone.

So, one reaches a deeper layer of the cultural onion: learning to understand why people do what they do, and appreciating the good motives behind the action. Then instead of confusion, stress, or resentment, there is gratitude. That is also a necessary step to reaching the next layer down: learning how to help others save face, but doing so in a way that not only corresponds to the culture, but to the often counter-cultural teachings of Christ.

Think about the excruciating extent to which Jesus, as an honored teacher, let alone the Son of God, willingly lost face, allowing Himself to be publicly humiliated and dishonored as far as humanly possible, out of His love for us. 

As He taught us, we must often, rather than saving face, turn the other cheek.

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.

Chinese Religion, and the Excluded Middle

1. Intro - How we explain the World

Hello, tonight I'm writing about a topic that has been the source of much misunderstanding and miscommunication between Westerners (especially missionaries or those whose work involves them with Eastern religion one way or another). It's called the "Excluded Middle." (For those interested in more reading on this topic, here's a link to an essay by the late missiologist/anthropologist Paul Hiebert, to whom credit for the concept of the excluded middle is typically attributed.)

In the West, we have a more or less binary view of the universe/all-that-is:

Blue: Unseen/Supernatural world, dealt with solely in a religious context.
Green: Seen/Natural world, dealt with by science, etc. (Light Green: Mysterious, but not religious)

Notes:

1. I'm talking about 2015
It was not always so in the West; pre-christian/pagan Europe would have looked a lot more like the Chinese Religion chart we're covering later. Up until modern science, the light green area would have included things like alchemy.

2. This is the West as a Whole
I've drawn the blue section that small to demonstrate how for much of the modern-day West, religion is considered extraneous to normal everyday life. Those of us who grew up in the Bible belt sometimes don't realize how secular most of the West is. By the same token, yes there are a few westerners running around who espouse hinduism or some other non-western-origin worldview. But they'd probably be the first to tell you what a non-typical-westerner they are, so we don't need to consider that kind of outlier here.

3. This is Showing how We Explain Reality
As believers we know God is not separate from His creation, nor is He uninvolved in our day to day lives. However, this chart is referring to how we explain the world around us, not our teleology. (The "how," not the "why.") When you encounter repeated car trouble, you may pray about it and wonder what God is teaching you through it, and you may try going to a different auto mechanic, but you do not blame it on your deceased Uncle Joe who's angry you didn't put flowers on his grave this year, or a rival at work secretly stealing some of your hair and attacking you with voodoo.

4. Most People Do Leave Room for the Mysterious
I've included a little band for the "unexplained," those mysterious phenomenon which lots of people find fun to think about and talk about. Go out far enough into the American countryside to encounter folk culture, and this gap widens considerably. I did this to show that really in the West we have our own category here, the big difference is that we draw a firm line (represented by the thicker black line) between that kind of thing and anything religious. If, in certain churches, as I mentioned in a previous post, you start getting blurry lines there (believing in God but also carrying "lucky" tokens, putting a cross over your door not just as a sign of faith but also to keep "evil" out, etc.) then you are descending from orthodox doctrines into the slippery slope of folk theology, which typically leads towards an increasingly fear-based way of thinking with less and less resemblance to orthodox, scripturally-based faith.

So that's the West, in general. But in strict Modernism, and today for both atheists and the "science replaces god" people, you have the most simplistic possible view of the universe:

I could reduce it even further by simply writing "Synapses firing to no purpose."

Looking at this chart, perhaps it becomes apparent why it's so difficult to have conversations about the existence of God with those who hold to this way of thinking. To them, there is only the dark green part steadily filling up the light green part, no need for any blue at all. They must have life experiences or realizations of some kind that totally shatter this too-narrow illusion of reality to open up to the idea of a supernatural world, otherwise they simply ascribe anything "weird" to that buffer category as one more thing science will eventually explain. (This is what I call the "Science of the gaps" theory)

2. Chinese Religion - A Different View of the World

So that's "The West." When approaching "The East," a lot of Western people expect some mystery, some things that operate according to different rules than they're used to. Asia is that place where odd, inexplicable things can happen. However, and this is important, for westerners all those inexplicable things typically go into the "Mystery" category that is not religious and not really supernatural. Though it's not politically correct now, you've perhaps heard or read about various tribal/traditional religions described in older literature as "superstition," "mumbo-jumbo," and similar deprecating terms. The implication is that they aren't based in any kind of reality, that between the scientifically explainable world (creation, for believers) and God in heaven there is no "middle world" that civilized, educated humans need take into account.

Outside of many churches we might describe as charismatic, even Bible-believing Christians are usually very hesitant (in the West) to ascribe anything they observe to those kinds of spiritual forces the Bible clearly teaches exist, let alone those on which it does not comment.

Contrast this with how a typical Taiwanese person might view the world:

So here you can see, the world for a Taiwanese believer in traditional religion is a much more complicated place. The majority of Taiwanese would look at the world in this way to a certain extent, even if they do so by rejecting parts of it. ("I don't really believe ancestral spirits come into our world and bother people" is a statement only someone raised in and recognizing this worldview can make; a Christian Westerner does not believe that either, but they wouldn't ever say it because the question itself does not exist for them.)

Note the "Gates." In a folk/traditional religious world view, there are portals of various kinds between this world and the unseen/spirit world. Some of these may simply be natural objects of significance- a notable boulder, an impressive tree- that are "linked" to the unseen world (thinking of them as having spirit-wifi access might be a good analogy), as certain kinds of animals are considered to be as well (especially the "tricky" ones, like foxes). In Chinese traditional religion, however, there are "higher" portals or gates between this world and the spirit world that are open at various times or in various ways. One very notable example is during Ghost Month, when the gates of hell are said to open to let spirits of various kinds come into our world and potentially trouble the living in various harmful ways. (There is a long list of activities deemed "risky" during this time due to possible attack or negative influence from the spirits)

In the West, we might think of something like an Ouija board as a similar kind of "portal," and often Christians who lack a robust understanding of "spiritual warfare" -really just the wider reality the Bible clearly teaches that we live in- will instinctively revert to a very folk religious way of thinking when confronted with the occult. That might be the easiest way to visualize Taiwanese traditional religion for a Westerner, however- imagine if you lived in fear of the occult every day, and your culture lacked a "highest God" who could hear your prayers and who cared about you. Your only option would be to invoke what powers you knew of to protect yourself. Throw in the very strong mandate regarding ancestor worship, and that's basically how religion works in Taiwan.

Notes for the Chart:

1. This is a general attempt at contrast, not a highly accurate parsing of Chinese belief
It would require a hugely complicated chart to even begin to explain a vanilla version of the world according to Chinese folk religion, and to some extent it would be impossible because many people embrace multiple conflicting belief systems, feeling logic is inadequate to deal with the divine and it's better to be safe than sorry if one turns out to be true. This is a rough sketch, and if you want to find fault with it, it would be easy to do so. (If you feel I've really made a basic error, please leave me a comment and explain how so.)

2. "Grey Areas"
Another Western thing to do is place things in clearly divided categories. Things like Qi/Chinese medicine (somewhat related topics) and even business profit are not purely natural, scientifically explicable phenomenon, but are connected to the invisible/intangible and spirit worlds. More on this later...

3. I'm not clear on the Chinese pantheon, but few are, even adherents
What I have observed is that few people try to grasp the recognized hierarchy of gods and approach them accordingly. People in different walks of life and from different families and ethnic backgrounds worship different collections of big and small gods. There are gods associated with certain places/areas (The city of Taipei has a patron god, for example, every patch of rice fields has a little earth god shrine, and some say every house has a little spirit), gods associated with certain trades (the sea goddess Matsu, very important in Taiwan, is connected to anything that has to do with the ocean, like fishing, and much more besides), and gods associated with certain roles. (Guanyu is a warrior god of justice and protection, worshiped variously by those who wish for protection for their business, and by both police and triads/gangs)

4. Chinese "Heaven" is hard to explain
In Chinese thought, the idea of 天 (Tian, "heaven," but that's a misleading translation, it's not a place people go after death) is more like the divine order which maintains the universe, decides justice, decrees fate, and is over all things. Apparently Tian varied and still varies between being thought of more like a highest God (getting close to a transcendent monotheistic God, which some claim it originally represented), and more like an impersonal divine force, depending on the time period and the variety of Chinese religious thought/philosophy. "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world," might be getting a little bit closer to the idea for Westerners, if you imagine that the terms God and Heaven were identified closely enough to be interchangeable. But this all gets confusing because at the same time there's the diverse pantheon of gods, as mentioned above.
How those gods and Tian divide up responsibility for governing the affairs of men (not even to mention various Chinese flavors of Buddhism with Buddha/manifold Buddhas being present as well, alongside Chinese traditional religion) is far beyond the scope of this post, but I think I'm not entirely wrong in say it's rather like a Roman Catholic idea of the Saints and Archangels and Mary doing a lot of the helping, protecting, and blessing for individual people, while God can of course also be prayed to directly, but is farther away and less accessible, ruling and sustaining all, and taking care of managing the big picture. (I hope I have not falsely represented Roman Catholicism by that description, but that's quite orthodox compared to what I observed in Mexico...)

 3. The Excluded Middle

Now think of the conflict in worldviews we have. On the one hand, you have science handling the task of explaining anything we can reliably observe and a transcendent Christian God who cares about and engages in the affairs of men, and on the other hand you have a whole "middle world" of spirits and the spirit world which plays an intimate role in the affairs of men, with a Creator or Highest God far off and not practically involved. The Western worldview, based partially on the revelation of scripture itself but also on other secular factors, simply discards the "hidden" reality of this world and also any "lower" divine realm altogether. Most of the rest of the world does not. Sharing the gospel effectively in a traditional/folk religious culture may require understanding this fact.

Given this view of reality, by way of analogy, a "vanilla" western approach to sharing the gospel to a traditional religious adherent might sound similar to one janitor at an overseas Microsoft office telling another janitor to call Bill Gates and ask for a promotion (in a culture that doesn't reward such audacity). You are telling someone who believes in a whole tiered hierarchical system in which even dead relatives must be appeased and in which the gods, if they be willing, provide assistance purely on a transactional basis (worship and sacrifice, in exchange for blessings or protection), that the God higher than the entire hierarchy wants to have a personal relationship with him. If the Holy Spirit has not already been preparing their heart, it may take some time for them to wrap their head around that notion. They will be more interested in knowing whether your God is more generous or powerful than their current gods, what kind of benefits He's offering in exchange for their loyalty. (Thus, sadly, the prosperity gospel is rampant and popular in Taiwan. In one sense, it's simply monotheistic idolatry)

Western missionaries are often put into a difficult position, therefore, of being asked to explain how Christianity as a belief system handles situations which we have never previously acknowledged as existing in the world. And sometimes it can be unnerving. Exorcisms are already shaky ground for most of us, but at least any Biblically-literate Christian knows they were happening in the New Testament, though their life in the West is not likely to have provided them with experience in that sort of thing. But what happens when entirely alien scenarios unfold? "How will your God protect me from ancestral spirits bringing bad fortune to my business if I don't set out the spirit offering tables?" is probably not a question for which most American pastors have a quick answer. The knowledge does not fall into one's head the moment one lands in one's ministry field, I can tell you that much for sure.

Thus, the default quick answer, very often, is "I have good news: there are no: [ancestral spirits, gods, evil spirits, curses, etc...] who can harm you, because they don't exist." (Or worse, "because the Bible says they don't exist.")

"Ok, now let's figure out a culturally relevant way to share the gospel."

Even if it's true that no spirits of the dead are roaming around the town waiting to inflict misfortune on those whose rice offering is too scanty, this reply does little for the inquirer. That's because he wasn't asking you about his world, he was asking you about your God. If the question is whether God can and will protect him when he needs protection, the answer is yes, God can and will do that according to His will, and no spirit- evil, ancestral, or any other possible kind of spirit- is outside the will of God. Teach him to read the Bible for himself and he can decide whether his cultural opinions regarding the afterlife are reconcilable with Scripture. And it's likely he'll do a much better job of explaining the gospel inside his culture, having accepted it inside his culture, than you would. Taiwan is full of Christians who never understood the gospel until they lived in the West. There the gospel made sense, but returning to Taiwan, they find it difficult to share with people not similarly familiar with western ways of thinking. There are many reasons for that, not only the one we're talking about here. But it seems something must be done to share the gospel inside Taiwan's traditional culture that seemingly has not yet been done.

4. Then, What?

Must we avoid syncretism? Yes we certainly must. I am not advocating in any shape, form, or fashion blending Biblical truth with traditional beliefs or confusing the two. But we can recognize that everyone comes to Christ from where they are, not from where we are. A step towards Christ from within Chinese traditional religion, or any local religion or different world religion, will not necessarily look like a step towards Christ from within your own background.

As I shared in a previous entry, everyone comes to Christ within their own cultural context. So if we want to take the gospel across cultural divides, we have to go to them not only geographically, but step inside their context and point the most direct path to the Kingdom we can, not one that snakes back away through our own cultural context beforehand.

This is just the basic idea, there are vast arrays of subcultures from which people believe on Christ

If we need for a local person to be educated regarding our Western worldview so that we know how to share Christ with them, we'll never really take Christ into that culture, only take people out of it. We have to continuously point them to Christ from wherever they currently are, even if that means their walk towards Christ looks much different from what we saw in our home culture

That's much more challenging than just translating our favorite gospel presentation into their language. But we have the Holy Spirit, and we have discernment, we have Christ Himself and His life in us, we have special revelation in Scripture which can keep us in the right path if we keep it in heart and in mind, and we have a calling from God to reach every culture with the gospel. That's sanction enough to figure out a few things along the way.

I increasingly feel our job is not to educate, but to introduce.