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.

15 Months in Taiwan: Where I Live (Picture Post)

So having been in Taiwan for 15 months now, I wanted to describe the community where I live.

15 Months on the Same Island (No worries!)

As of this week I've been in Taiwan for 15 straight months, the longest I've been in Taiwan before and actually the longest I've been in this small of a geographical area for quite some time. Even not counting going to Chicago a couple times for training and other random trips, the last four years before Taiwan involved a lot of traveling between Alabama and Texas for seminary and then support raising, over 660 miles one way. (Randomly, that's a bit farther than from Paris to Vienna. The US is a big country..)

For comparison, Taiwan's main island is only 250 miles long in total. Taiwanese students often complain they feel that Taiwan is small and enjoy traveling off island when possible, and I can empathize. But I am less prone to feeling this kind of claustrophobia since a) I spent most of the rest of my life out in that world, and b) Taiwan is such a rich and varied place. Each area of Taiwan has a notably different feeling from other areas, and the abrupt transitions between busy crowded cities, peaceful farming areas, and rugged mountains help make it feel like a much larger place than it is.

Where I live:

While trips away are nice, typically I'm busy serving in this community. It's a former industrial area where most of the jobs went to China years ago, high-density and low-income. The population is divided into three major parts: local long-term residents, usually working class or lower middle class, sometimes struggling as the community declines; commuters, whose work and lives are mostly elsewhere and who live here because it's cheaper; and new arrivals, mostly higher-income and younger who work in the hi-tech businesses along a renovated corridor that follows a main road.

Factories in our community. The mountains in the background are across the river.

The large neighborhood at the core of our ministry area is pretty typical for Taiwan, though in the greater Taipei area it counts as a bit run down. Daoist shrines are clustered among the dense row apartments separated by narrow streets shared by pedestrians, dogs, bicycles, motor scooters, cars, trucks, motor-driven scrap carts, etc. Everything is old and dirty, but it's quite safe, and the front and backs of the row apartments are lined with narrow balconies often filled with potted plants that sometimes send flowers and foliage stretching out into the air above the alley ways. Lately during the frequent grey days of early spring, those flowers and the bright red Spring poetry banners (春聯) posted around the doorways of the buildings are the only bits of color amid the drabness.

It can be a little bleak at times...

See what I mean about the spring color?

But, on a blue sky day, it's not so bad...

Notably, outside our ministry area to the west the Dapinglin MRT (mass rapid transit, Taipei's metro system) station is only about seven minutes' walk away, and as you near the station things are notably different; it's a commercial area, with newer buildings, lots of restaurants, and generally feels more like what you'd expect in the greater Taipei area. The main road running up from Xindian proper and passing right by the station changes names to become the famous Roosevelt Road that is the main artery of SE Taipei City, continuing on all the way to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. The MRT station is also poised to become a transfer station by the end of this year, making further development a certainty.

At the MRT station intersection

It's hard to say how much that will affect our own community (other than property values inevitably rising), since investment follows main roads and MRT lines, and it's "tucked away" from these more influential areas. The community is bordered on the north and east by the Jingmei River, and seems almost a victim of that geography. Visualize a squarish area with the left and bottom sides formed by two main roads, with the bottom road especially being renovated, with luxury apartments in one spot, and the upper and right portion of the square not square at all but defined by the s-curve of a big lazy loop of river, with things getting poorer and older the further up into that loop you push, until by about 2/3 of the way in it's nearly all factories, some still open. The exceptions are where the river loop is punctuated in two or three places by bridges, and things are nicer right where the bridge enters the community, perhaps reflecting the fact that across the river (which has an amazing walking/bike trail that runs along it all the way up to the Taipei Zoo) is Taipei City proper.

A local garbage truck.. no trash cans in Taiwan, you take your garbage straight to the truck at certain set times.

The Jingmei River, boundary between Taipei City proper and former Taipei Country, now New Taipei City.
The yellow railings on the left are the beginning of that walking/biking trail.

Along those two main roads things change to mixed residential-commercial, with the bottom and sometimes upper floors of the buildings occupied by numerous restaurants and businesses. To the south is the hi-tech corridor I mentioned earlier, which begins abruptly as you walk out of our community and are suddenly facing large new corporate buildings, notably HTC's well-designed new headquarters. Past that is a parking garage for Carrefour, a French "hypermart," which shares its huge building with a foodcourt, spacious gym, and rooftop driving range, but within a stone's throw of it there's a large lot with overgrown shacks and banana trees. (All this is at the bottom left corner of that square I mentioned earlier.) Across from that are some newish higher-end car dealerships and a Starbucks.

One of the entrances to our community. The archway sign is for the temple on this side of it.

Just a couple minutes' walk away, the upscale area. Not shown: Gigabyte's corporate HQ is here too.

Keep walking and you're back in another neighborhood quite similar to ours. Across one main road from our community (the "left side" of our square), the street is lined with multistory apartment buildings with shops down below, but the community back behind them feels even older than ours.

The "left side" road, past those rows of apartment buildings and getting to the expensive area up ahead.

A quieter street in the "hidden community" back behind the apartment-walled main streets

This street, quiet in this picture, is often lined with vendors. To the right is a "grey water" (waste water that's not sewage) ditch lined with houses that aren't much more than shacks. It smells sometimes.

Older communities in Taiwan can be like mazes, with roads not featured on google maps (which has done a very thorough job in Taiwan in general), and passages between buildings not even wide enough for a person on a bicycle. There's an old day market, usually deserted, which is the fastest shortcut between where I live and the main road with the 24 hour McDonalds. If anywhere in our community is haunted, it would be that deserted market in the lonely hours of the night...

Turning to the right leads out to the road, keeping to the left leads deeper into the market. Creepy at night.

To the left: The mysterious passageway. Behind those covered walls to the right is that drainage ditch.

I have said before that old Taiwanese communities are bigger on the inside than on the outside. What I mean by that is the actual area of the community might be less than half an acre, and it's flanked all around by modern multistory apartment buildings. Yet get back behind those, and you'll have these little passageways and alleys and "you can't get there from here" sections that remind you that you are indeed in Asia.

And That's It For Now..

So that's a little glimpse of my community. Scroll back up and you can see it's a diverse place. Lots of lifestyles, lots of income levels, lots of challenges for the work we're doing, and lots for me to continue adjusting to as I experience life over here.

Is there anything you're curious to know more about regarding life or ministry over here?
Most people comment on FB where I link to these, but feel free to do so here as well..

That Time I Almost Fought a Hobo: 3 Stories from Taiwan

Doing ministry in Asia, one encounters all kinds of interesting situations; interesting both because the cultural context is not one's home culture, and because one's reason for living in that culture involves not just trying to make oneself as comfortable as possible "despite" the unfamiliarity, but immerse oneself in it to understand it better. That immersion leads to lots of interesting situations, which are not always pleasant at the time, but those always make the best stories later...

Today I'm sharing three random stories of life in Taiwan.

1. Southern Hospitality

Last summer I was down in Kaohsiung visiting some American friends, and they decided to take me to a certain beach near a university. (The night before we'd climbed a mountain with dozens of monkeys surrounding us as darkness fell and took pictures of Kaohsiung's nighttime cityscape from the Martyr's Shrine, but that's a story for another time) We took a short cut which ended in a locked metal gate, with various warnings about not going that way, but also a very obvious wallowed out spot under the door where everyone had been going underneath it. We hesitated, not wanting to trespass, and asked a Taiwanese man on his scooter whether there was another way. He looked at us kind of funny and said we should just go under the door. Going by his seeming confusion that we would be considering other options, we decided it was established practice enough that we could "do as the Romans." So, we did, and I was happy I'd lost a good bit of weight since getting to Taiwan, as it was not much more than literally a human-sized gap, and not an especially large human.

Once we were through we quickly descended to a nice beach, which was "maintained" by the people who used it. They regularly picked up trash, and had constructed a little walkway down to the beach (from the main road, if you were coming from the opposite direction we had been) made only of driftwood and scraps, which led down from a path that led through some woods and then dense hillside foliage.
There was also an artificial basin that held water from a spring, clear and cold, which wasn't for drinking but could be used to wash the sand and saltwater off. People had also constructed a changing booth and a couple of beachside huts, again from mostly scrap materials, wire, and some boards and bamboo poles, sheltered from the wind behind large boulders/rocky outcroppings. (It was well and efficiently designed; as an engineer by trade, I approved.)

I don't have many pics from the beach, but here's one showing the scrap-constructed walkway

While at the beach we met a Haitian student who'd been studying in Taiwan for a while and seemed to find solace in the beach from her loneliness and culture shock in general. There was also a random streaking incident by a young lady we were told was mentally confused  ("Whelp, guess we'll have to go find her again," said the older lady who'd brought her). There was a pack of dogs roaming around too, but they were not quite wild, more like beach community dogs, who would bark a little but just to make sure you knew it was their beach that you were borrowing and didn't bother you otherwise, but appeared to be greatly enjoying themselves in general.
It was an interesting day all around.

As we were enjoying the ocean (though siltier than usual), we bumped into some students from the Taipei police academy. After chatting with them for a while, they invited us back to a small gathering which had convened in one of the beachside huts. It seemed to be a family and some friends, and they kindly offered us a spot to sit and cold drinks they'd ordered a lot of, not even thinking of accepting payment. Though they spoke on English at all, it seemed perfectly natural for them to have a few foreigners drop by and chat, eat some snacks, and then wander off. (Southern Taiwan especially is like this, I am told) The hut was constructed so that the breeze could easily blow through, yet it was sturdy enough to apparently withstand typhoons (or had been repaired since the last one). We chatted until more people came and we felt we should let them have our seats, then thanked them and took our leave. It was a friendly and laid-back sort of encounter I rarely have up in the hurried north, though sometimes one merely has to get out of the city to find them.

2. Attack of the Belligerent Hobo

Over a year ago now we had our Winter VBS for the community kids. The community center where we held the VBS has an outside courtyard and little park alongside it, a great place for a VBS in our area where community centers are usually small and cramped or share a building with other occupants/businesses.
Having decided to take advantage of some good weather and this outside area, we let the kids go on a scavenger hunt, with a list of things they needed to take pictures of using their cellphones.

Where it all went down..

A couple days previous, a hobo had claimed a spot on the perimeter of the courtyard area. I call him a hobo because that's seemingly what he was; an older man with unkempt hair and beard in old but not filthy clothes, seemingly well-fed and not on drugs, but who was obviously homeless and carried his things around on a large cart. In the US someone noticing a hobo hanging out by a park where kids play would probably fear for their children and call the police, but in Taiwan the police won't come if he hasn't done anything specifically wrong yet (which I think is fair, being homeless doesn't make you a bad person), and also by the time they get there he's easily able to wander off, as he did on at least one occasion when the police did eventually show up to check things out.

They did show up in this case, later on, because he was what I'd call a belligerent sort of hobo. He seemed somewhat bitter, acted like having parked his cart there meant he owned the place, and had no qualms about angrily lecturing those using the playground equipment if he felt they were doing so improperly. He yelled at kids and made them cry for using equipment which was really for adults to exercise on, and when the mom asked him to stop since he was scaring her child, he scoffingly explained the reason the child was crying was not his warning but her own poor parenting.

So as the kids are going on their scavenger hunt, they are mostly skirting the old man but aren't necessarily afraid of him. But one of the items on their list was "dog" and since the old man had two dogs with him, they skipped over and took a picture of one.

"Raaaargh!" -instantly the man jumped up yelling angrily, and began wrestling the camera from the child. I couldn't understand what he was shouting at the kid in Mandarin at first, but as I physically interposed myself between him and the kids, I heard him saying "delete it! delete it!" As best I could make out, he considered the dogs his own property and not a public display, and was offended that the kids felt they could take a picture without asking. Furthermore, he informed me as he calmed down (slightly), after I showed him that I had deleted the pictures in question, he didn't think a foreigner should be teaching Taiwanese kids anyway, as this was "educational failure" according to him. (This was a really great incident to occur right during the most difficult portion of my culture shock adjustment, let me tell you..)

Fortunately (and interestingly) the kids were only briefly startled and not terrified, perhaps since many of them were neighborhood kids and familiar with odd customers coming and going and grumpy old men in general. So "I don't like him"/"He's weird"/"What's his problem" was the consensus, versus the reaction I can only imagine a lot of American little kids would have had in that kind of confrontation, of stark terror. I was probably more shaken up by it than they were, as having to use my limited Chinese to half take, half talk the camera away from him was also a rather stressful language test (Hey, Mandarin pop quiz! Violent-crazy or just crazy?), and at the beginning I was beginning to physically intervene as I thought he might hurt the kids. (And though I was willing to drop him if necessary to protect the kids, being seen as "the foreigner who beat up that old guy" would be a terrible way to start out in this very aggression-averse culture. The really tough cultural hurdles are those when local moral sensibilities like "there is almost literally nothing more shameful than ruffianism like fighting publicly" collide with my upbringing of "if you had to fight someone off to save a child, you did a praiseworthy thing." In a pinch, I'd have to stick to my principles and take the consequences whether I was understood or not. So I'm glad in this case it turned out not to be necessary.)

Interestingly, the nearby moms (of other children in the park, not our VBS kids) stood by awkwardly during this incident and seemed not angry or indignant at the man so much as relieved the publicly embarrassing situation was resolved peacefully. (I'm guessing part of that really was embarrassment on their part, due to the fact that I was a foreigner and that was not a good face of Taiwan to be showing me) The man remained there for another day or two, with more angry lectures (we have a great word for this in English: "haranguing") but no more confrontational outbursts, until people finally asked the police to come, as they'd begun to threaten him to do if he didn't stop yelling at their kids. (He disappeared before the officers showed up, leaving his stuff, then disappeared altogether later) Massive cultural learning experience all the way around. But once is enough!

3. Chinese Mafia Noodle Soup

In the wider community where I live, there are a number of small restaurants, but fewer than in many parts of the metro area. So I was happy to discover, about seven minutes' walk from my home, a beef noodle soup restaurant. These are common in Taiwan, and beef noodle soup is a Taipei specialty, with nearly infinite variations on a few basic types. This place was run by an older gentleman, who looked to be well past potential retirement age.

He greeted me politely and after I ordered, suggested I try the tomato beef noodle soup next time, because "you foreigners all like that kind." (He was being friendly, and I wasn't offended. Nor would it have mattered if I was offended. Some people these days need to take the rhetoric down a notch.) He knew this was true, he explained, because HTC (the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer) main HQ is within eyeshot of the restaurant, and there a good number of westerners coming through on business trips who always liked the kind with tomatoes.

I said I might try it the next time (I still haven't, come to think of it, the kind I ordered was so good I get that every time), and enjoyed my meal immensely.

Now, there is a certain table in the back that's the sort of place and angle where I like to sit in restaurants, and I always try to sit there. I haven't yet succeeded, because the owner moves me every time. "No no, that table is too small, please sit over here, it's much better, you can see the TV," etc. Sometimes he doesn't even offer a reason, just apologetically moves me. In all the times I've gone, I've never seen anyone sit at that table, regardless of how many people are there.

Also, as I left that first time, and all the times since then, I've noticed the cook is a man of about the same age as the owner... with arms covered in triad-style (Chinese mafia) sleeve tattoos. I should note that tattoos (at least obvious noticeable ones) are still somewhat culturally taboo in Taiwan, partially due to gang associations. So when you someone in Taiwan of his age with the sleeve tattoos like that, it's more or less a dead giveaway.

 I also noticed that the cook and the owner seemed to be friends more so than boss/employee. So now I'm pretty sure I know what happened...
A mafia higher-up had a dream: He was getting too old for this nonsense, and one day soon, he would quit this life of crime, and open a nice little noodle shop. One of his mafia brothers joined him, and together they retired and settled down in a suburb of Taipei City to make amazing beef noodle soup.

One cannot simply leave the mafia, however, and there is necessarily a certain level of 'business' that still goes on. Those wishing to partake in it signal that... by sitting at a certain table in the back of the restaurant. I wonder if there's a certain dish you have to order. ("I'd like the beef noodle soup with the very special spice.") Like I said, I've never seen anyone sitting at that table, even with the restaurant busy, so maybe one day I'll have the chance to find out...

One reason it's an awesome place: So much meat! Some places only give you slivers

Hope you enjoyed these little anecdotes... Though most days aren't full of crazy situations, it's still true that when you walk out your door here, you never know exactly what might happen by the time you get back...

Russell Brand and Special Revelation

1. A Different Brand of Message

Even a loose cannon is right twice a day?

Along with thousands of other people online, I have been entertained by some of Russell Brand's viral posts (one on the existence of God, another on the problem of porn in today's society) which have circulated recently.
One can't help but wish the man was a believer, both for his own soul's sake and also in terms of the impact his native intelligence and charisma would allow him to have for the kingdom. (On the other hand, we see repeatedly in scripture and in life that God purposefully chooses the humble and unimpressive as His instruments to accomplish His purposes, for His greater glory.)

Mr. Brand is a man of... interesting beliefs, and an interesting background. If you weren't aware of his existence prior to those videos which are circulating to some extent in the Churchosphere, go searching for much of his other material and you might find yourself scrambling for the pause or back buttons. So understand that of course my post is in no way an endorsement of Mr. Brand as a good role model (he would insist that he is not, and we would all agree), or his opinions to be generally trustworthy. (He's a marxist, self-confessed heroin addict who enjoys transcendental meditation, for starters)

I'm not linking to the videos here because I'm not really interested in promoting Mr. Brand and his variety of other outspoken opinions on this blog; if you are a responsible adult feel free to find them on YouTube. ("Russell Brand", "Stephen Fry", "is there a God" will take you to the first. Take note, it includes Stephen Fry's arrogant, blasphemous little rant accusing God of being neither sane nor good.)

While Brand argues against the possibility of a literal interpretation of (any religion's) scripture, and says he doesn't like dogma or organized religion, he does argue enthusiastically that we live in a world where there is a sort of God behind everything, and whose image is reflected in us, and supports the basic idea of a sin nature. In the second video he argues that pornography is wrong, goes against conscience and warps our perspective of each other as human beings, and that both men and women (and he himself) should stop doing it.

The first video, though too vague to call support for a monotheistic concept of God, was also an effective refutation of Stephen Fry's disrespectful and unsubstantial proclamation of unbelief in a recent interview. Though lacking any logic and pretending perfectly good answers to his questions haven't existed for hundreds of years, Stephen Fry was rhetorically aggressive in his "assault" of theodicy, and millions of non-scientist science groupies, "brights," and god-denying, would-be intellectuals doubtless think it quite a devastating argument and the end of any discussion. (Ideological wars are reminiscent of the Bronze Age; most soldiers weren't particularly good at fighting and nobody liked dying, so it was often preferable to have two champions fight and each side could cheer theirs on.)

But Brand basically popped up unexpectedly and dismantled Fry's negative attack, and it's strange but compelling stuff. It's hard to think of an American equivalent, but it would be a bit like the countering argument to Bill Nye coming not from Ken Ham, but an excited Steven Tyler.

The strange thought occurred to me that, sadly, in some ways the videos are better than various sermons I've heard. I have sat through plenty of vaguely topical sermons, in churches both in America and in Taiwan. Honestly, watching those two videos of Brand's excited rambling probably made more of a difference in my life overall than listening to some of those sermons did.

2. Majoring on our Minors

How could that be? Because I'm a worldly Christian who needs dubious celebrities to say things on TV or the internet before I believe them? Because I'm not willing to search for some applicable truth to my life in every sermon I hear, even the bad ones? As Paul wrote, "By no means!" Much of what Brand says are simply purported truths he's personally noticed about our world that are misunderstood or purposefully obscured. One reason his words in those videos resonated with many people is that much of what he claims to be true is truth that can be seen from the world, what we would call general revelation. To borrow Paul's words again, from Romans 1, evidence for God can be plainly seen in what has been created. Those who reject that evidence are given over to depravity and sentenced to live out the consequences of the delusion they preferred to the truth.

Brand has indeed indulged in depravity, admits he still does a variety of wrong things when he can't stop himself, and can speak with sincerity of what results from it. In recent years, he has sought the path of becoming "a better person," and now apparently seeks to encourage everyone to be better people as well. It's a sort of secular gospel, with some truths we would recognize as scriptural mixed in there here and there, with a lot of hindu-ish mysticism and Brand's own randomness mixed in. It does come across as an interesting breath of fresh air in the addled chaotic mess that a culture of "do as thou wilt" has led us to. But clearly, it's not the gospel of Christ that brings eternal life, not the message the Church is on earth to proclaim.

Conversely, when the Church lays aside its unique identity and blessings, loses sight of a gospel focus and tries to copy what the World already specializes in, it fails almost every time. That extends all the way to the pulpit. If you just want to pick a topic and give a good talk, there's someone in the world who has more natural talent and can do it better than you. A gifted agnostic speaker could no doubt pick a Biblical topic and give a better talk on it than many preachers "sharing" a message. Many would be edified, (earthly) lives would be changed, etc. That's the power of a good speaker.

So what does the church have that the most positive, talented, morally-upright (in content, if not in life) speakers and encouragers don't have? We have the special revelation of God about Himself and His promises, accurately in the words of scripture and perfectly in the person of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to proclaim that revelation and live it out in this world. That's "all."

The Church instituted by Jesus Christ to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples of all nations until He comes has been equipped by God to do exactly that, and no one else can do it. So we preach Christ resurrected, and a hope placed not in this world but in its Creator. Or at least we should preach that.

Whenever we stop preaching it, whenever we start trying to make people better, or use man's wisdom to achieve God's results, or desperately long for recognition from Hollywood, the media, etc. to validate our way of life and thought, we fail.

What Russell Brand demonstrates is that general revelation, truth anyone can observe which ought to lead them to seek out God, is out there, and those in the world with the motivation and willingness to do so can perceive it, at certain times and in certain ways. This kind of general truth is never a bad topic, but if that's all we're preaching, we're not sharing much that Mr. Brand can't say too, probably more interestingly. We have more to offer: the words of eternal life.

3. Κήρυξον τὸν λόγον (Preach the Word)

So then, why do we keep trying to major on our minors? I don't even know. There are probably a hundred reasons, not least of which is the constant clamor of the world around us. We live in the "loudest" age there has ever been, with more distractions than have ever been, being bombarded constantly by more information than humans have ever had to endure. Eventually, it seems compelling. The problems with which we are confronted by the world seem compelling for the same reasons. That's an external factor.
 An internal factor is that a lot of pastors are tired. Regardless of whether or not they've ever been trained to dig deeply into scripture and present the fruits of that labor to their flocks in an effective and challenging way (globally, most have not), sometimes they simply have too much on their plates for one human being.

This could be their own fault, for not saying "no" when they should, but more often it's because a lot of Christians "delegate up," assuming many of the spiritual responsibilities of every believer are really the job of "professional Christians." (Of course Christians should try to do it more, but you have to do it, it's your job. Even as a fairly new missionary I've heard that line a time or two.)

I have good news for the church: God trusts you with the job too. There are no professional Christians, there are only professing Christians. Want to change the church overnight? Convince those sitting in rows on Sunday morning, or maybe even yourself, that church is not an event, it's us. We are the Church, and every believer is a priest; we are, as one of my Hebrew professors at seminary wrote, a Kingdom of Priests. Christ is our heavenly mediator, and we are His representatives on earth. There's no one else to give that job to; no one else is doing it if we aren't.

Of course, it's true pastors do have a sacred responsibility to proclaim the word. And a nice homily on showing gratitude or being kind to others is great, but it doesn't provide vital spiritual nourishment any more than a cookie does. We live in a wrecked world, infected with evil. Evil men are systematically rounding up and murdering Christians as you read this, both in Africa and in the Middle East. If the roots of our faith are not deep, the winds of adversity or attacks of temptation will simply knock us down. A topical message with a couple relevant verses simply won't cut it. Believers need the spiritual protein from the meat of the Word to build the necessary muscles, or we'll be weak Christians forever. And that's not the kind of weakness the Bible is talking about when it says "when we are weak, He is strong," it's more like the weakness of Proverbs 24:10: "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small." We must Preach the Word.

So in conclusion, if our faith is weak, and our understanding of the Word is weak, we cannot boldly proclaim Christ to the world. We won't even see why we should, let alone be willing to risk loss and embarrassment for it. Maybe we'll retreat to nice-sounding messages with "enough Bible" to be legitimate. Maybe we'll even retreat to "positive, morally-uplifting" messages that lack scriptural foundation altogether. At that point we're no more helpful than Mr. Brand; we've left our spiritual inheritance, and wandered into the domain where he speaks with more authority to many than we. How embarrassing would that be?

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.