Eureka Moments: G.K.Chesterton on Paganism

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

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

Where Faith and Reason are Strangers...

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

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

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

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

Some Enlightenment from G.K.Chesterton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Initial Take-aways:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pearl Harbor mistake, and a lesson for Mission

I don't usually post on this sort of thing, but the Pearl Harbor attack 75 years ago today offers an excellent analogy for a danger that lurks in our most sincere mission efforts. As we honor those today who lost their lives while in service to their country, let us also reflect on the important lesson the Pearl Harbor attack contains for those of us involved in gospel ministry.

1. Background: The Attack

On the morning of Dec 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy," over 350 Japanese planes suddenly attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii. The surprise raid led to devastating losses for the US Pacific Fleet. The U.S. temporarily lost all 8 battleships in the Pacific Fleet, and nearly 200 airplanes, in exchange for fewer than 30 Japanese aircraft downed in the attack.

It was a violently successful raid, which by its very success led to strategic danger and eventual defeat for Japan. For most missionaries, if we achieved a "dramatically successful" ministry, we would write to our supporters in excitement. But how much thought would we put into how whether that success translates into long-term strength for the gospel and local church in a given area?

Whether through over-eagerness, by the desire to "see something happening," the decision to capitalize on a current situation, or simply wanting to bring all the resources we have to bear on a given gospel challenge, it's easy to only think of the tactical aspects, the details in how to successfully do a given ministry or activity, and not think past it to the strategic level, the longer-term or wider implications of what we're doing.

2. Tactics vs. Strategy

The Pearl harbor attacks were an excellent example of how great tactics can be poor strategy. In the short term, the surprise attack was a crushing success which severely crippled the US in the Pacific. In the long term, however, it was the event which brought the US into World War II, and led to the defeat of Japan and the other Axis powers.

Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the raid, had strongly opposed the war effort, stating:

“Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas, knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.”

As Yamamoto himself admitted, planning the attack was an act of desperation against a powerful nation with a greater industrial base, which he believed would eventually overwhelm Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a tactical strike made in hopes to somehow achieve a strategic victory, to demoralize the U.S. or "end the war before it starts." On that front it utterly failed, however. While America's fighting capabilities in the Pacific were temporarily halted, the vast U.S. industrial capability was now focused into the war effort. As new Allied forces poured into the Pacific, Japan was not able to hold on to all the new territory it had conquered, and was forced back, to eventually surrender after nuclear strikes on the home islands.

It's impossible to know in hindsight, but it is widely suggested that Japan's chances of holding on to much of its captured territory would have been significantly greater if it had done everything possible to prevent or delay war with the U.S., rather than fiercely striking out at U.S. naval forces at their own base, an action sure to infuriate America and maximize popular support for entering the war.

From a strategic perspective, the longer Japan had controlled its conquered territories, the more resources it could have obtained from them, and the more industrial capability it could have developed across its nascent empire. If a direct confrontation with the U.S. eventually occurred, the Japanese could have fought back from a position of much greater strength with a widely distributed and deeper industrial base to support the effort.

3. The Lesson for Great Commission Efforts:

One Ministry's Strategic Failure in Taiwan

A book I once read by a former Taiwan missionary (whose name sadly escapes me, the book is back in the States), recounted a disappointing instance in the efforts to evangelize Taiwan. A large gospel operation was planned, and dozens of local young people were trained in sharing the gospel and sent out into Taiwan's countryside, reaching thousands of people. Hundreds indicated they were interested in following Christ, and it seemed the outreach had been a great success.

Some time later, however, when missionaries returned to those areas to see how things were going, they were only able to find a single person still following Christ. Everyone else, lacking any spiritual support and surrounded by the idolatry that had been all they ever knew, were absorbed back into Chinese folk religious practices. Like the seed in Jesus' parable, the gospel had been snatched away by the Enemy, or else quickly choked out by the weeds of idolatry which flourish so thickly in the Taiwanese countryside.

"Perhaps we should have planned less and prayed more." the missionary sadly concluded, contending that the spiritual darkness of Taiwan was not to be lifted by well-planned efforts alone, but by spiritual battles which had yet to be won at that time. (My own observations here suggest spiritual battles for the soul of Taiwan are still waiting to be fought by Christians and missionaries willing to rise up and fight)

The apparent failure of that effort, and many smaller ones like it, are one reason Taiwan has trouble retaining missionaries. It is a gospel field full of thorny weeds, thin and rocky soil, and watchful birds. I rejoice at the frequent news of the harvest being reaped a few hundred miles to my West, in cities across China. May we see similar things happen on this side of the Strait in days to come. But for now, one labors for years to build relational context, establish trust, understand the complicated variations which run through the subcultures of Taiwanese metaculture, etc. 

Things that work in other places often fail here; there is a spiritual bondage yet to be broken, but also Taiwan is just a complicated place. You have to love it, and possibly be a little crazy, to come dive headlong into the Chinese language and figure out how to share the gospel in an effective way when the majority of people consider ritual more important than truth, tradition more important than logic, and success in prosperity possibly more important than any of the above. Many incoming missionaries begin with enthusiasm, but after struggling to really connect with people spiritually, eventually move on to areas where people are more open to the gospel.

"Why Spend so much Time? Just Preach the Word"

"So then, why spend so much time trying to perfectly understand where people are?" you might ask (and others have asked, in my hearing). "Let's not waste time with all this, we're here to preach the Word, let's just preach it." 

It's true that hesitation or lack of initiative can hinder the work of the gospel, but the ability to "just preach it" in a way that is effective usually comes after the efforts of many other workers and ministers, and it also depends on the people to whom you're preaching having had their hearts readied to receive the truth, and understand the basic concepts you are communicating.

As Acts 14 recounts, Even Paul and Barnabas, going a bit off the beaten track when escaping from Iconium, did not start an instant gospel movement in Lystra with their preaching and even a miracle of healing, but were instead believed by the provincials to be Zeus and Hermes, and sacrifices were almost made in their honor. "Just preaching the word" didn't work for them; there must be spiritual willingness and some measure of basic understanding, both things which the Spirit can provide suddenly in a gospel movement, but often chooses to accomplish through years of labor by kingdom-minded believers in a given area.

Tactics vs. Strategy... Ministries vs. the Local Church

I only have a few years of experience in Taiwan thus far, and I'm sure there was an era in which higher-level strategic efforts were made by mission boards and organizations separately and together to see fruit for the gospel in Taiwan. 

Now, at least, I don't see a lot of thinking at the strategic level; most missionaries are focused on their individual ministries, which as I well know are absorbing enough to occupy all of your time and energy and then some, especially if new missionaries are not coming or staying. At that ground-level, tactics seem to be at the forefront by default, because it's hard to think of anything else.

For missionaries wanting to really have an impact for the gospel, however, strategy can't be ignored to focus purely on tactics; we can't just focus on the impact of our individual ministries without considering the wider effect on the local Church. Just like Japan lost partially by too quickly goading America into the War, whereas waiting would have let them strengthen their industrial base and presence in their new territory, when we seek to capitalize on our own mission opportunities in the short term but do not strengthen the local church by them in the long-term, we have not achieved a strategic success, and may even have made mistakes which will weaken the local church in the long term.

Perhaps you do work directly with the local church, so it seems like this shouldn't be a problem. But are your activities equipping that church to reach its locale and cooperate with other churches for the kingdom over the long term? We should always be investing our efforts in that direction when possible.

Good questions to ask ourselves might look like the following:

"For this new ministry we want to do, are local workers going to interested in continuing it after we leave?" 

"If we come in and make lots of things happen with our resources and motivated foreign missionaries, will this be reproducible for local believers? 

"What will this church we're planting be doing in 10 years? Have we built in a foundation of discipleship and mission from the beginning?"

"If we push to evangelize and disciple based on what we're used to, before we understand the local culture, will future gospel efforts be stunted here by having taught locals to do mission in an American way that's unnatural for them and the culture?" 

"How can we develop partnerships with existing churches to have a greater impact and also give them experience in this kind of ministry?" 

"Is pouring all our efforts into this one church helping the local Church overall?"

Or maybe more localized questions that combine tactics and strategy, like:

"For this meeting, if we do an invitation we might get some people to raise their hands. But by doing at the very beginning will we alienate more people who are just figuring out who we are in this community? Do we know what decision they consider themselves to be making?" 

"If we invite short-termers to get a big boost in the activities we can do, are we able to follow up well on that for long-term benefits to our local effort? Will we create false expectations in the people we're trying to reach with the gospel?"

It's not always possible to consider all that, and having considered it, it may not be possible to always act in a strategically productive way. But asking ourselves questions like this will help keep strategy on the radar, and Lord willing, prevent us from spending years with our heads down in labor, only to look up later and find little long-term progress can be seen after all our work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Religion in East Asia

 

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

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

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

Shinto: the Japanese cultural religion

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

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

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

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

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

Confucianism: the foundational Chinese ethical system

 

One of the central figures of Chinese culture

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

Chinese Folk Religion: Chinese Traditional Polytheism

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

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

Buddhism: the pan-Asian religion

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

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

3. Comparing to Christianity...

A. Principles These Religions Share:

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

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

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

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

B. Differences with Christianity

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

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

4. An Automatically Foreign Religion

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

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

A. Two worlds, Two systems

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

B. Two worlds, One system

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

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

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

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

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


C. Another Kind of Language Barrier

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

5. Getting the Gospel past that Security Tray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No Other Gods before Me" vs. "It's Safer to Believe them All"

(The Puzzle of Religion Pluralism in Taiwan)

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

I was reminded recently of one of the difficulties in sharing the gospel in Taiwan. A friend invited me to eat dinner with her family, who were very happy to have a missionary over. They are not believers, but the mother told me "the world is a more beautiful place because of people like you." She then claimed proudly that Taiwanese people love diversity and can respect any kind of thinking or religion or worldview.

In the context of our conversation, her claim was more or less accurate. In the West when you share the gospel outside of a relational context (and sometimes even inside one) with another Westerner, the person with whom you are speaking typically knows that you are making a truth claim that demands a decision on their part. They may become defensive or even angry because they know you are communicating that their current status is unacceptable and wrong, and they need to accept the truth you are presenting to them. All too often, no matter what we say, what nonbelievers hear is "you are broken... and I'm here to fix you."

In Taiwan, this is much less the case. Especially young people are interested to hear what you believe, if they think you are an interesting person (normally Americans are in this category by default), and will thank you for sharing something with them that is so meaningful to you. But to them your sharing confers no responsibility on their part whatsoever; you're just discussing one belief system in the spectrum of beliefs that make up society. You might get more or less the same reaction talking about how important it is for us all to do our part to protect the environment, or the importance of spreading literacy in developing countries.

I recall a restaurant owner in Kaohsiung one year who, after finding out we were a short term missions team, happily gave us a discount for our meal, explaining that he gave the largest discount to Buddhist monks, the second largest discount to Christian missionaries, and also a discount to students who were doing their mandatory year of military service.

If all religions are basically good and help their adherents to be better people, it's an entirely reasonable and morally upright attitude, and indeed that is how the world thinks. If one religion is true and the others false, however, it's wishful thinking, hiding behind pleasantries because the implications of having to sort through what is true and what is false on one's own are too daunting.

"A Name-Unknown Diety"
Shrine to an unknown god in Keelung

Pluralistic yet Traditional

 

So Taiwan is something like a truly pluralistic society, rare in this world, and for adults already established in traditional beliefs it can be hard to get anywhere until people find themselves in truly despairing circumstances and reach outside themselves for help. (By contrast younger generations of Taiwanese increasingly don't really believe traditional religion at all, they participate in it purely as a family activity, and are much more open to a message of God's unconditional love; more and more of them are from broken families and have only received very conditional love at best)

Often, people come to Christ in Taiwan due to the help and support of Christian friends in a time of crisis in their life, after which they are willing to begin going to church and eventually believe. Baptism, however, the symbolic step which has the effect of officially separating them from Chinese traditional religion, doesn't come until years later, when they feel confident enough to take that step, knowing it may lead to ostracization and fighting within their family. Some people won't do it until after their parents have passed away.

This may seem like a contradiction: how can a people be so pluralistic, yet the decision to become a Christian cause such problems within a family?

The answer is largely in how different Christianity is from a traditional/folk religion. In Chinese traditional religion, it is not at all important what you "believe in your heart" about the gods and spirits; people don't even think in those terms. The gods did not create you (there is a creation account, but that's largely irrelevant and the original creator god is not accessible to people), nor do they love you. The important thing is that you do X, Y, and Z, where X are typically actions that involve protection from evil spirits and their influence, Y are actions that bring yourself and by extension your family or business blessings and prosperity, and Z are actions that promote family and community connectedness and honor spirituals connection to the past.

There is also a saying in Taiwan, "it's better to believe than not," which basically means that belief is better and safer than doubt, since while no one is quite sure whether the host of gods and spirits of the Chinese pantheon (and others) exist in reality or not, it's safer to act as if they do, rather than risk the disfavor of the unseen. It's more or less the polytheistic version of Pascal's Wager.

So the problem with Christianity in a Taiwanese family is not at all that you believe there is a Creator God, that you believe Jesus can purify you from your sins by His sacrifice and save your soul from eternal punishment, etc. Even the Trinity is no problem; in Asia religions are supposed to be mystical and occasionally not make sense in human terms. I haven't met a single person in Taiwan who rejected Christianity on logical or argumentative grounds that did not at the same time reject all religions in general in favor of secular scientism.

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

There's No Fun in Dysfunction in Taiwan

The problem here is the fear that, once you believe another God ('The Western God,' as is all too often the perception here), you will stop "being a good Taiwanese family member." You will stop observing the proper safeguards against evil and misfortune ("Sure, maybe your god will protect you," the conversation would go, "but what about the rest of us? It's your responsibility to join in the ceremonies on our behalf."), you will stop appealing to the gods for luck and prosperity, which for the majority of Asian families is not an individualistic affair- your own prosperity affects your family and others-, but most importantly, and this is the sticky point for most families, you will not observe the proper rituals together with the rest of your family for your ancestors after they die.

Imagine a large and close American family who would call themselves Christians but aren't too serious about it. Suddenly one of the aunts has "an experience" while on a trip to the Himalayas and wants to convert to Hinduism. It's a bit awkward, and there is some disapproving gossip, but if she doesn't start acting too weird no one wants to openly complain. But let us say she then refuses to join the family for Christmas because she doesn't believe in celebrating Christian holidays anymore, and on top of that won't attend the funeral of beloved Grandpa Joe unless she's allowed to offer rice balls on his coffin to appease his restless spirit, and begins inviting the kids in the family to go down to the Monkey temple with her, meet her guru, and present offerings to Shiva.


This situation might be unacceptable to many families by itself. Now imagine after all that, the only son of one of the more prominent couples in the family now professes a desire to become Hindu as well. You can imagine that it is a rare family who would react happily to this news, let alone the mother and father, who now imagine Christmases with their only child refusing to come home, and perhaps eventually no flowers being placed at their graves, but rice balls offered up in Hindu ceremonies, and who knows what else.

For a more traditional Taiwanese family, which is still the default here, that's a reasonable picture of what it feels like to them when family members start becoming Christians. (It's even stronger than in the example because in Chinese culture your parents have much more input into and control over your life than in the West, even into adulthood, and expect you to worship them after they die just as they had to worship their parents), Nearly all cultures place a strong emphasis on holidays/times of family gathering and the proper way to handle a death in the family. Disturbing these meaningful observances due to a 'foreign religion' will not be looked upon favorably.

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

The solution for many Taiwanese Christians is to demonstrate that they are indeed still part of the family, and that Christ and the Church are purifying and not corrupting influences in their life. That can be easy in very open-minded families who aren't picky about the traditional rituals or have already stopped practicing some of them, or very difficult in families who are very traditional or have members with religious responsibilities. For my friend mentioned at the beginning, she is a believer but her parents believe children should be able to choose their own religion. That is increasingly common in Taiwan, yet those holidays and worship of deceased family members are often still problem points. It seems like a small thing to ask for the family, who don't worship idols because the gods they represent are worthy of worship, but in hopes to get favor/assistance/protection from them in exchange for the worship. The idea that there could be a transcendent God, a Most High God whom is the only God worthy of worship and indeed the only God who can rightly be worshiped, is more or less totally absent from polytheistic religions. (Communicating that concept is an essential part of the pre-evangelism process in Taiwan; sometimes people think they can just add Jesus to their personal pantheon and if he's a nice god he'll get along with the rest ok. As Westerners we do this with our schedules instead.)

Sometimes it takes a very bold believer to be the first; to be willing to endure their family's criticism and shaming and appear to be a "wayward son/daughter" in order to follow God. Sometimes their living testimony then shines in such a way that the family changes their mind about the faith, and may even look favorably upon other young members becoming Christians. That's not something we can make happen as missionaries, it takes courage and faith on the part of local believers. But we can pray for them, encourage them, and work alongside local churches to help them function in a healthy way, where young believers can be trained in sound doctrine and grow in their walk with God and older believers can set an example in faith and good works.

Looking Forward:

In the future, things may actually improve. There are some interesting parallels with America here. Fewer and fewer Taiwanese are choosing to follow traditional religion strictly, and the rapid loss of traditional morality is impacting Taiwanese culture in a negative way, similar to what has occurred in the United States, at the same time as the economy has gone from formerly booming to stagnant (again, similar to the United States.) And the people I've talked to seem to feel the same way about the situation as do conservative-to-moderate Americans: uneasy at what seems to be a downward spiral for the culture into disorder and moral decay, hoping for answers and a way out of this mess but not too optimistic about future prospects.

Taiwan's birthrate has plummeted, now the lowest in the world. Divorce rates have rapidly increased, and stable, traditional family units, long considered the foundation of Chinese culture, are increasingly disappearing

Whereas in rapidly post-christian America we have seen a general turning away from the Church as the societal default, in Taiwan's pluralistic culture the historical default is not Christianity but Chinese traditional religion (Sometimes inaccurately referred to as Buddhism, with which it actually exists in paradoxical but comfortable parallel. Thus is religion in East Asia). If the Christian churches are seen as a stabilizing influence on society and a source of moral goodness, they can become an increasingly acceptable option for Taiwanese, who already seem largely more concerned that their children at least be decent people than that they follow traditional religion. It's the perfect time for outreach and for churches to demonstrate the love of Christ and the unshakeable wisdom of the truth of scripture. (And not the false promises of the prosperity gospel which itself is merely monotheistic idolatry)