Is the Problem Planned Parenthood, or You?

This Topic...

Generally speaking I keep this blog politics free. However I don't consider abortion to be a political issue but a moral and spiritual one which plays out symptomatically on the political field due to its nature. It's a huge problem here in Taiwan as well, where even a higher percentage of babies are aborted than in the U.S.

I'm seeing a lot of disputed figures being thrown around regarding the Planned Parenthood debacle, of which I'm sure most people reading this will be aware. "The facts" in this case seem to differ depending on who is citing them, to an even greater extent than usual, and everyone from Congressmen on the Right to FB friends on the Left seem to stumble as they pick their information based on ideologically friendly sources which are focused on polemic over accuracy.

But while anyone with a functioning conscience rightly recoils in horror at what was going on with what they call "tissue donation" (like calling what the Nazis did "mortality research"), to me the most troubling aspect is that what they are doing is apparently legal. Regardless of whether Planned Parenthood is federally defunded or not, that must change. One of the sickest aspects of the whole affair is that Planned Parenthood defended themselves not by explaining that of course they weren't carving up living babies in the womb for their parts, but by clarifying how they were handling the funds involved in doing so. Yet as obvious as it seems to me and many of you that such things should be considered unspeakable atrocities, let alone very illegal, many people rise up bristling in anger when one suggests it. Why is that?

1. The Underlying Issue

The philosophical flashpoint around which the whole issue revolves is the question of personhood. Even a lot of abortion advocates believe human life begins at conception. They don't consider it murder to end that life, however, because they consider it human life in merely an abstract sense, not a person deserving of rights and protection in our society. To them, tending also to be involved in women's movements, a woman is a person, in fact a person of a social class that has been previously mistreated and deserves special protection, and the "fetus" is not. Therefore subjugating a woman's rights to that of an unborn lump of tissue is wrong in several ways at the same time, in their eyes, and they react to that prospect with rage and indignation which they consider righteous.

Now if you believe living people have souls, as all Christians do, and that life begins at conception, then you must logically believe that either there is a human soul united to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception, or that there is a human life with genetic information already supplied by both parents to which a soul is united at some unknown point in the womb. (Scripture does not offer specifics, though logic suggests conception as the most plausible option)

In either case, there is not some kind of benchmark for the progress of physical and mental formation that can serve as a definitive precursor to personhood. I personally believe the human soul exists from the outset, as the physical person and mind designed to match perfectly with it develop in the womb and beyond (Psalm 139:13-16). And if the soul exists from conception, then we must call it a person from that point, even if the fullness of personhood has not yet manifested itself. It has not yet done so in a toddler or teenager either, for that matter, but is a continual process from conception to death and beyond. We are people from the very beginning, and becoming more human all along. (Indeed, the fullness of our humanity as God intended it will not be known until we taste life after death. Only Jesus is truly, fully human, the Firstborn from among the dead.)

If, however, you do not believe living people have souls, and thus consider personhood to require having attained a certain level of physical development with a certain level of brain function, etc., you will be open to persuasion regarding exactly what point personhood is achieved. Certainly an unaware, tiny mote of tissue is not going to seem like a person yet. Even an embryo which is aware of outside stimuli, has taken on human appearance, and recognizes the voices of its parents might not make the cut. Some people, like the infamous Peter Singer and others, take this even farther and suggest birth should not necessarily confer personhood either, since new babies are not fully sentient, brains still rapidly developing, and aren't really people yet according to their stricter definition. (Since most people think emotionally more than rationally, they consider this "horrible" without ever stopping to realize it's just an extension of their own definition of personhood. Where do you draw the line? If nothing is sacred, why should the mere act of passing through the birth canal be so special that it suddenly confers full personhood that did not exist two minutes earlier? Because we adults can see the baby now? Because the amniotic fluid is now replaced by the thinner fluid of our breathable atmosphere?That seems quite arbitrary with regards to the child itself.)

A soul waits as its body and mind develop

2. The Great Impasse

So we have a conundrum. People who believe in the human soul and people who reject that concept are going to have a deep and fundamental disagreement on abortion, which is exactly what we see. It's easy to point to the more strident and offensive members of both sides (though you'll note the millions of deaths are all on one side), and claim that's who you are fighting against. It's easy to throw out various scientific data as well. But the issue at heart is not of science, but of philosophy and faith, because questions like "When is a human a person?" "Do humans have souls?" cannot be answered by scientific inquiry.

Since people do have souls, abortion in most cases should be outlawed as murder, as the developing embryo is a person. Indeed, if human life begins at conception, as a plurality on both sides of the controversy acknowledge, and if the soul is present from that point, then even emergency contraception, the so-called "morning after pills," etc., may represent the forcible separation of both parents' genetic information from the soul, which counts as ending a life. (It has been pointed out that many fertilized eggs fail to implant on their own. Well yes... in our world today, all souls experience physical death via natural causes at some point. But acting intentionally to ensure that this takes place sooner rather than later is called... murder)

However, you are probably not going to convince many people who believe neither in God nor the human soul that the developing human is a person at such an early stage of development. Not necessarily because it conflicts with their own interests, though this is often the case, but also because the very nature of the question of the existence of a soul makes it a foundational aspect of one's worldview. In other words, both believers in and doubters of the soul would be required to destroy and then rebuild most of their ideas about humanity to admit they are wrong.

So you will have, and do have, the Church grieving an ongoing, legal, mass infanticide while Humanist groups deny anything of the sort is taking place, or that it would be wrong if it were (because if there is no God, human society collectively figures out what is good for humanity).

3. What Can Be Done?

Currently, it appears there are only two options for stopping this generational slaughter:

1) You manage to be loud enough and insistent enough to get it banned despite many people not agreeing with your basic logic behind the ban. We do live in a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease democracy now, for better or worse (mostly worse), so that approach can work if enough people get stirred up. That's exactly what has happened with some Republican congressmen on this issue just recently; enough of their base were fired up enough about the horrible, true revelations regarding some of Planned Parenthood's activities that they felt the pressure to take action on it and vote against the spending bill on that issue alone.

So this approach has been tried, does work to some extent, and as abortion becomes more and more emotionally distasteful with new technology that allows people to see just how human preborn humans look and act (and are), there may be some traction. Also, many political approaches have foolishly taken an "all or nothing" approach in the past. It doesn't make any sense to reject bans that make exceptions for rape, etc., as "compromised" when what you have now is nothing. Saving some babies now would be an excellent first step towards saving the rest.

However, this kind of ban is a shaky victory, which usually doesn't last. It's achieved with the aid of public sentiment, which can just as easily swing back in the other direction years later, and the Church is not nearly as good at being loud and insistent as many secular advocacy groups. We are about Christ's business, or should be, and while the people of any free nation should be concerned with its right governance, that is not the primary responsibility of the Church. Which leads me to the second method...

2) You convince the majority of people, or an influential enough plurality, that people really do have souls. Then, convinced that preborn humans are people too, a ban on killing pre-born people would logically follow. Most people aren't trained to think logically, but they're pretty good at being uncomfortable when something seems morally iffy. If they even strongly suspect an unborn baby is a soul waiting to be born, abortion is going to sound alarmingly like what it actually is.

This talk of the soul would have been more difficult in the age of Modernism, but with Post-Modernism we have found that as our understanding of the universe increases, some things we were sure about before become less certain. We used to "know" there can't be an immortal soul because we couldn't ping it with any scientific instruments and get a measurable response back (actually even that may not be strictly true); now people are much more open to things being out there that are accessible in ways which present difficulties for the scientific method. (not to speak of the current prevailing deterministic materialism in the world of scientific academia which they stubbornly conflate with science itself--an unwitting tribute to philosophy)

So though many gallons of Church ink have been spilled bewailing generations educated to believe there is no absolute truth, at the same time post-modernist ideas have actually removed some significant barriers to evangelism. The Church could be making great headway if we began to engage our culture from our real position of richness in Truth and epistemological strength in Christ and the Scriptures, instead of turning it on its head and trying somehow to be of the world but not in it.

This, as it turns out, is the approach Christ has already commanded us to be working on. Christians should start sharing the gospel and truths of Scripture with their non-believing friends and neighbors (not simply trying to get them to visit the church and then relying on their pastor to explain these things), and with passion and positivity, speaking the clear truth with love, explain our belief in the human soul, of our creation in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, and how every life is precious in His sight, and should be in ours too. And our actions had better line up with our words.

4. Redefining Pro-Choice

Is it difficult to have those kinds of conversations? Usually yes. There is no clear segue from "So did you catch the game last night?..." to "...and that's why human life is intrinsically valuable," but even in the few years I spent as an engineer in the work force before venturing forth on long term cross-cultural missions, we managed to end up having conversations like that around the water cooler quite a few times. (It helps if you pray specifically that God will allow you opportunities to share, and are intentional about it)

But honestly... with our brothers and sisters being martyred in the Middle East and elsewhere (even in this latest Oregon shooting, it looks like), and legal induced abortions in the U.S. having passed the 50,000,000 mark since Roe v. Wade, can you really explain to God that you are too busy, aren't adequately prepared, or are too fearful of other people's opinions to even make the attempt to communicate His truth to a declining culture, one person at a time?

If so, then stop complaining about Planned Parenthood, because the problem is you.

Evil will always be around until final judgment, but being "the good man who did nothing" is your own choice. Don't be that person, choose life, and life abundantly. That's what could turn things around; Christians choosing action over inaction; choosing not to retreat from an increasingly insane culture but to engage the people around them with the love of God and truth of the Word in the context of their own daily lives. Choosing to recognize we are all called to live for God and not to merely fit Him into the reasonable and appropriate crevices in our status-and-comfort-chasing lives.

Planned Parenthood and their advocates believe that with no God, human society determines what is right and wrong, and who is necessary and who is expendable. They provide the services which take this decision and enact it by means of a whole range of options, from smiling early prevention to gruesome live dismemberment.

They are busy acting on those beliefs.
Are you busy acting on yours?

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.

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.

3 Things I Wish Christians would Stop Doing

In this post I want to talk about 3 things I've noticed a lot of Christians doing (and of which I've certainly been guilty at times as well) which I submit aren't doing us any favors. I believe noticing them and trying to reign them in would strengthen the Church and our witness.

1. Being Careless with the Truth in our "Edifying Anecdotes"

Many of you have doubtless heard the story about the church in a persecuted part of the world where one day masked men broke in brandishing guns and demanded that anyone who wasn't a true believer and ready to meet their God should leave. Once a large portion of the worshippers had fled in panic, the leader removed his mask and said to the preacher something along the lines of "Ok, all the fakers are gone, you can keep going," and he and his team of not-actual-terrorists then joined the worship service.

This very well may be based on an original true story. (If you know the source, feel free to share) The problem is that I've heard it told as a true story many times, and the location seems to wander around. Africa, China, Russia, etc. Did anyone bother to verify the origins of the story before sharing it as true? "Oh, don't be such a stickler," you might think. "the important thing is that it's making a point."
But the same thing happens with miraculous stories...

Recently it has been in the news that a boy who told an amazing story about a trip to heaven while in a coma, having grown up a bit, recanted the story and chided Christians for believing his account which does not adhere to scripture. Lifeway has since pulled the book from its shelves. But these "trip to heaven," "trip to hell" stories which so many people marvel over and find edifying can usually be dismissed offhand early on, not because heaven or hell aren't real places, but because the stories in question describe a creative take on the pop culture version of heaven or hell. That's usually quite different from what we find in scripture, which is that upon dying one goes either into the presence of God or away from His presence to Sheol (Hebrew, "the grave"), and that the fiery place of torment of Matt 25 and pearl-gated golden city of Rev 21 are both descriptions of post-final-judgment destinations, not the immediate destinations of the departed.

(Another common mistake: while we don't know much about Sheol -the waiting place until judgment for those who die without Christ- from scripture, we do know the lake of fire was created for the punishment of satan and his fallen angelic allies (Matt 25:41), and they will suffer there too. Satan is not the ruler of hell, hell was created as his punishment. According to the book of Job, he is not enthroned in some fiery realm like Surt in the Muspelheim of Norse mythology, but apparently roams around the earth itself, which I find in some ways to be a more unnerving image.)

And speaking of angels, fallen or otherwise, there are innumerable stories about angels out there. Some are doubtless true. I've seen a weird thing or two myself. But note that the Bible is not very talkative about angels, at least not in the systematic way that would satisfy our curiosity (and lead to idolatry...). Angels are not the point- God is, and they are God's messengers. Scripture also describes angels as guarding us, though not to the extent that the "guardian angel" idea has been developed in popular thinking. (Psalm 91:11 is very general, Matt 18:10 is very interesting statement by Jesus but leaves us with more questions than answers, and it is unclear whether Hebrews 13:2's "some" is talking about people among his readership or referring to Old Testament accounts like Lot's angelic guests) 

How angels feel when you share questionable anecdotes about them...
("DespondentAngelMetCemHead" by Infrogmation -
Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.)

I like the story about the guy in the jungle being protected by angels from the people who were going to attack him, who said he was surrounded by armed guards (who were invisible to him), but it turns out that may not be true either.


I say "may not" because the writers at Snopes dot com (urban legend debunking site) are quite obviously antagonistic towards Christianity (even for faith-inspired stories they had to verify as true due to factual evidence, they feel necessary to interject that they don't think anything supernatural occurred). At the bottom of that article, for example, they include stories of missionaries receiving help just as someone far away felt led to pray for them as supposedly obvious fabrications. I don't know about those particular incidents, but I happen to know that does sometimes happen, because it's happened to me before. On the other hand, they raise some reasonable doubts about the details of the story as presented in print, based on multiple printed versions. My guess would be that the earlier Billy Graham book account is closer to whatever true event inspired the story. Of course it's possible the story is entirely made up, but these things definitely do happen on the mission field, and my guess would be it was in someone's prayer letter and unfortunately things proceeded loosely from there.

However, just because "these things happen" doesn't mean that particular story is true, or should be repeated as a true story, details being altered as time goes on. The snopes article itself ends like this:

Moreover, it's sadly ironic that so many tales contrived to display a particular belief system as The One True Way include fabrications tossed in to better carry the message.

While their sarcasm is unwarranted, there is an important point we can take from it- our willingness to accept and pass along any story because we live in a world where supernatural events can occur is not a good witness, making faith seem like mere credulity. And it's dangerous for us too, a little like building our faith not on the solid rock of God's faithfulness and work in our lives but on the shifting sand of anecdotes that "seem likely."

So should we be finding inspiration in unverifiable stories just because the content is beautiful or motivational? Should we be scared to share any story at all? At least, let's treat them as just that: inspirational but unverifiable stories, and be very, very careful what we pass along as "true." Truth should hold special value to those who believe in the Truth of God's word.

Supernatural events do occur in this world (I have fun stories), and we have real evidence for what we take on faith, but assuming every story, whether miracles, angels, trips to heaven, etc., you hear is true (or not bothering to consider whether it is or not) and passing it along, slowly but surely weakens our habit of testing what we hear. We have to be neither cynical nor naive, like the Bereans who were praised by Paul for not taking his words for granted, but searching the scriptures before accepting them.

2. Confusing Apologetics with Evangelism

(Yes, I know apologetics can be used in an evangelistic way, first hear me out:)

A. Evangelism is not arguing until the other side admits you're right

I think we all know this already, and I'm reminding myself as much as any of you reading this, but we can't debate anyone into the kingdom. So as a method of evangelism, a good debate, beloved by so many educated believers in the Western tradition (me too), serves at best either as a transition for sharing the gospel directly/sharing one's testimony, or to remove the false facades which people claim prevent them from believing, which are really smokescreens and excuses. Having removed those, someone will typically say something like "well I still just don't think God exists." Now they're being honest- all that other stuff was not the basis for their unbelief, it was the other way around. The assumption is "no God," and all the other stuff proceeds from that assumption. Which is why...

B. It is typically not helpful to argue with scientists about evolution

It pains me to say that, having been raised in the proud homeschooled evangelical tradition of "creationism vs. evolution" debates, and have years of experience doing so online and occasionally in person. Sometimes I've "won" the discussion and sometimes I've "lost" (at least, I did my best to learn from each discussion, so they were profitable in that sense), but what I would say is that unless you have a pretty good grasp of the scientific principles involved and some basic understanding of what the modern set of theories collectively described as evolution are in 2015, you may actually do more harm than good in trying to jump into the fray. One thing you have to realize is that the average non-believing scientist (or worse, 'science groupie') considers questioning evolution to be about as viable as proposing the earth really is flat. It doesn't matter if that's an unfair comparison, that's what it's going to sound like to them.

You may quickly discover you are at a home field disadvantage, because for decades most scientists have taken evolution as a given and worked from that basis. So if you do something like claim there is no evidence for evolution, they can just laugh and bury you under decades of scientific papers that all assume evolution. No one not coming from a religious background is going to question evolution at this point except real experts in those fields where it becomes obvious that evolution lacks some basic mechanisms to explain very specific phenomena they are qualified to speak up about.

In short, if you really can't help yourself, realize that you're going both against popular trends and against more or less the entire scientific community. Also recognize this is typically someone who has "there is no God" as their premise. You'd better have a pretty airtight logical case, be familiar with the normal counterarguments (the Socratic method of asking more and more difficult questions is a good way to learn these, and doesn't put you in the position of being the antagonist) and be prepared to explain exactly why you feel you can challenge the underlying theoretical assumptions of entire fields of research. And hopefully, you are praying for them and that the conversation will be edifying, not a triumph of your finely honed reasoning skills. As an INTP I face a frequent temptation to bring the logical smackdown on those who are clearly out of their league, forgetting that we are called first to be evangelists of Christ, not knights of reason.

Most actual arguments for evolution go like this: [In the chart above, let's say that "Some birds can't fly" = "God did it." Therefore, since "that's crazy" or "highly unlikely" (claims entirely outside the realm of science) all birds -must- be able to fly. Therefore, since Science can demonstrate with total confidence that penguins are birds, penguins -must- be able to fly, and you are just another naive believer in outdated superstitions who doesn't understand logic.] Ignoring the insults and countering this valid structure but invalid premise means you have to show them that their underlying assumption of "no God" is baseless. Therefore the rigorous science which demonstrates that penguins are birds is great and no problem for us either, but it has no bearing on the assumption that there are no birds that can't fly. But we believe, and have quite a bit of evidence that points to the fact that there are birds that can't fly. (That "God did it")
The argument then rests on whether you can demonstrate that convincingly.

Note: You can challenge their premises, with the method I outlined in the picture caption there. But I pick that kind of battle carefully these days. Only a few will be fruitful, and a good conversation about the gospel is so much better than lots of arguing which half the time ends up being over how you're using the same word in two different ways. I usually try to get the discussion over to my testimony, if I can.

A sad excuse for preparation:

(I rarely rant on this blog, so please excuse me while I do so for just a moment.) Back when I was in high school, we were taught as Christian students to challenge future college professors with "unanswerable questions" that would stump them. Personally I studied engineering which didn't require biology at my school, so topics like evolution only came up once or twice in chemistry class, and I didn't have any of those antagonistic sort of professors I read about.

But I submit that part of the reason so many students raised in the church get disillusioned and their faith shaken while in college is that some people are doing them the disservice of sending them into college thinking a) they will encounter Richard Dawkins-like antagonists who rant against God and use logical-fallacy-riddled arguments to promote evolution and other anti-scriptural ideas, and b) that their duty was to publicly call out these educated, experienced authority figures who could wipe the floor with them rhetorically, with the idea that this is "defending the faith" and their responsibility.

Instead they find that a) often their professors are of the shrugging agnostic or "I grew up in church but decided religion wasn't for me" variety, are sometimes even charismatic and dignified, and can make a student feel not that the gospel is false, but simply that they've lived their entire life in a broom closet, and the gospel might apply in there, but this is the big, wide world, and they're being invited to grow up and join it. Or, b) they do run into one of those antagonistic atheist professors, and trying to be a good witness, stand up to him/her in class, are then subjected to a good drubbing and public humiliation by the professor who has years of education and life experience to his advantage, and has perhaps polished his craft on the few unfortunate students who do this from time to time. At that point a crisis in confidence is almost certain, and without the right support a student will start to question what seemed so certain and straightforward "back in church."

And that "back in church" is where a lot of the trouble starts anyway. Getting plugged in both to a good local church and to a Christian fellowship at school can go very far to mitigate both of these dangers. Far from being bowled over and questioning their faith, students can come out of college strengthened in their faith and with some valuable ministry experience if they are active in a (good) Christian campus fellowship of some kind. (Be aware that there are one or two cult-ish groups that operate under this disguise)


So hopefully we can avoid the problem of setting students up for possible failure by making sure they'll have good spiritual fellowship and growth opportunities during their time at school, and not teaching them a vastly oversimplified version of what they're likely to encounter out in the world. Which leads me to my third plea, which is to please stop...

3. Simplistically Stereotyping other Belief Systems

I sometimes wondered, as a young Christian, how anyone could not be a Christian. It made so much sense, and none of the other religions I'd heard of seemed to make any sense at all. How could those people keep believing something so weird and nonsensical and obviously false?

But I found, around the time I started doing mission trips, that the beliefs of people I encountered overseas seemed fully developed too. Of course, many adherents of Chinese religion here in Taiwan don't even claim to believe the various major and minor gods to be real in the way we believe God to be real (more like "they might be out there, and if so it's better to be on their good side"), but developed in the sense that they had a worldview which explained things around them to a degree they found to be satisfactory. If a gap does occur, if a time comes when their religious system becomes unsatisfactory to them or their worldview can no longer adequately explain the reality they live in, then there is an increasing openness to new worldviews and metanarratives (which are something I'll discuss in my next post), and often a special spiritual hunger and the potential for gospel movements as well, like what happened in China during the turbulent years of communism when it was closed to outside missionaries and is happening in some other places as we speak.

But when reading about those other religions, in non-academic Christian materials, I have often found a strictly polemic attitude. That is to say, the main purpose was not to explain what other people believe, but to demonstrate the flaws and weaknesses in those belief systems, and perhaps reassure readers/listeners that only our own faith makes any sense at all. On the other hand, some explanations are not antagonistic but are simply such a watered-down, simplified version of those beliefs that one is left wondering how any adult could really believe that. Yes, some localized religions have degraded to more or less that point, and any contact with outside religions results in the locals hastening to drop their "old ways" and embrace what is clearly a more impressive belief system. But any major world religion has survived long enough that it's got to have some qualities which people find attractive, especially if it's spreading, like Buddhism or Islam. Prior to encountering the Perspectives course materials and then attending seminary with some great books on the required reading lists, the resources regarding other religions never mentioned what those might be.

Let me be blunt. That's bowling with the lane guards up. If we truly have faith, and if we are grown-ups, or even teenagers bumping into classmates with other belief systems, we need to recognize that people have reasons for what they believe, and if they're going to stop believing that and accept Christ, they're going to need reasons for doing that. That could be as simple as someone having grown up in a non-religious family and being curious about what you believe and asking you to explain, or as challenging as a need for deliverance from demonic oppression which only the power of Christ can effect through the prayer and fasting of His saints. But either way, if we're afraid that merely reading or hearing accurate depictions of earthly religions is going to tempt us away from the Living God, the effects of whose Incarnation changed not only our lives and the destiny of our souls but all of modern world history, then the problem lies not in those descriptions but in our own lack of faith.

Now obviously, I'm not suggesting you send a bunch of grade schoolers to Buddhist summer camp. And in the States, when teaching younger students about world religions I have always pointed out the differences between those and God's revelation to us. Anyone who feels their faith is weakened by exposure to other beliefs should pray for their faith to be strengthened, and take heart from the evidence that abounds, showing that though not seeing, we have believed, yet our faith is not blind.
But students who are mature enough, and certainly adults who are mature in their faith, should have a basic understanding of what other people in this world believe, especially if they intend to witness to them.

 For example: Paul was upset by all the idols in Athens, but he observed them carefully and when sharing the gospel before the Areopagus he used the example of one idol dedicated to an unknown god, and also quoted a Greek poet. He was not respectful of their beliefs (he got very quickly to attacking the idea of idolatry itself), but he made careful observations and tried to share the gospel in a way that had some connections to their worldview. He wanted to share the gospel in a way that would make sense, and used what he knew about Greek culture and had observed about their religion to do so.

A Taiwanese altar to an unknown god

Why does it matter?

It matters not only because if you don't understand what someone else believes, you will have more difficult sharing the gospel with them, but because when we are always surrounded by other believers it's easy to fall into the idea that the gospel is inherently reasonable or self-evidently true. Don't forget what Paul said:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:22-24)

The gospel is not going to sound inherently reasonable either to people of other religions, or to people who think that a modern education puts them above "organized religion." But understanding that following another religion or belief system doesn't make them stupid or naive, but merely in need of the gospel that will sound a little strange to them, we can speak God's truth into their own context in an effective way. Some will never accept it, but "to those who are called," of all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages, it will be the saving message of Christ, the power and wisdom of God.

That's it for today. I hope by understanding these issues a little better, we can be a stronger Church and more effective disciples of Christ.