Today I had lunch with a Missionary / Pastor who spent three years in Honk Kong Pastoring a Church there. He had several fascinating insights concerning the Chinese Church and Chinese culture, one of which really caught my attention.
He was saying that the Chinese government desire the moralism that is found in Judeo-Christianity in order to support their turn to capitalism. He said that many of them have come to learn that Communism does not give the moral underpinnings that is necessary to successfully pull off a expanding Capitalism.
However he also suggested that Chinese government officials realize that this is a dangerous game they are playing. While on one hand they desire a Judeo-Christian moralism, he also said that on the other hand they also understand that the Bible is a anti-statist book.
When he said this I was dumbfounded. Here he is testifying that Chinese Communist government officials understand that the Bible is a anti-statist book and I can’t seem to get large swaths of Reformed people in these united States to understand that the Bible is a anti-statist book. Quite to the contrary large swaths of the Reformed community seem to either think that Christianity can walk hand and hand with statism, or that Christianity doesn’t care one way or another about centralized government. The Chinese Communist government officials understand the Bible better than American Christian ministers and laymen.
Other interesting insights from his conversation were his explaining how many Chinese have completely lost categories and vocabulary to talk about an extra-mundane supernatural God. He says that for 60 years the Communists have beat into their heads that there is no God and so now they have lost the capacity and ability to talk God. He was not denying that the these sense of divine has been lost but only that the ability to communicate that sense has been largely lost. He noted that being back in America he is seeing the same thing in many “post-Christian” Americans.
He noted that in one of his studies with College age Americans he was teaching on God cutting covenant with Abraham. He was trying to communicate God’s goodness in making covenant with Abraham. He said that several of the students said that they, “didn’t want anything to do with a God who cut a heifer and birds in half.” I thought when he said that, “man, I need to get out more often.” If they are offended when God cuts a cow and birdies in half how much more are their heads going to spend when they get to the part where God puts His Son on a Cross?
Can it really be the case that the West has deteriorated so far that it will have nothing to do with a God who cuts cows and birdies in half because that is mean?
Pray for China. Pray for the West. If we completely throw off Christianity we will enter into a Dark Age the like which mankind has never known.
