Appreciating Christianity in China
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
By Karen McQuillan
“How could people be so cruel to their own parents during the Cultural Revolution?” I asked the 44-year-old Communist party member. We were talking above the din of a noisy wedding party. The bride began in a white wedding gown, and then switched to red.
I’d gone to China as a tourist, with introductions to meet as many Chinese people as I could. I hadn’t set out to ask about religion, but it seemed to be on many people’s minds.
His answer was unexpected. “They taught people Mao was a god. In China, we have no religion. No higher power that says this is good, this is bad. Nothing that says you will go to heaven or hell. Without religious belief, people have no limits on their behavior. We have no conscience.”
In Beijing, a hip college grad explained why Mao is revered by her generation, given that Communist policies killed 60 million people. “Sometimes the Buddha does bad things and sometimes good, but he is still Buddha.”
In his bustling office, a business editor told me and my traveling companion: “Our kind of religion is different from others. You can’t call Buddhism in China a religion. It’s not a faith, has no belief in God. It’s just convenient, pragmatic – you pray to Buddha for a promotion. It’s not a cure for the heart. Or the mind. Only Christianity will provide the alternative to Communism.” He predicted, “If people had more access to Christianity, it could rise to a third of the population.”
The Dalai Lama once wrote that since the Communists forbid true religious teachings they reduce Buddhism to superstition. This fit our observations. Indeed, every temple we entered seemed to have an obese, gold “Happy Buddha,” God of prosperity.
Many observers see the God of today’s China as money. The God of yesterday’s China was Mao. And the God before Mao was the Emperor.
Under Confucianism, China’s main religion, children each morning knock their heads on the ground before their father. It is one’s own human ancestors who are worshipped. The core value is to obey authority, culminating in the emperor. For 2000 years, absolute human power was the Chinese substitute for God.
Ancestor worship is making a comeback, we were told by the son of peasant. The main holiday is “Ghost Day,” when one feeds the angry ghosts of one’s deceased relatives. Young men are taught how from TV programs, we were told. Only sons can perform the rituals. Ancestor worship underlies the selective abortion and murder of female infants (30 percent in some provinces). There will be an excess of 40-60 million men (compared to women) in the next 10 years, according to U.N. reports.
One die-hard Communist told us cheerfully he was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. Yet as we drove past a church he, too, said that Christianity was popular.
China has an estimated 80 million Christians. They go to illegal “house churches” rather than the state churches with their government-dictated theology, according to David Aikman in “Jesus in Beijing.” The government renewed persecution in 2005 and Christians are being beaten, tortured and sentenced to labor camps – yet still their numbers are growing.
In a bookstore, our guide showed me four best-selling books on Jews. The Chinese are fascinated by Jewish success. She translated one title: “What’s Behind Jewish Success: Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.”
These conversations about Christianity in China made me appreciate our faith-based American culture. Americans take for granted our living 4000-year-old ethical roots in the Hebrew Bible. In China, there are no teachings that God created each of us in his image, that every individual has a precious soul and is equally valued by God. There are no teachings to remember that you, too, were a slave in Egypt and to treat the stranger as thyself. Our belief in individualism and human rights flows from our deep religious base.
The secular elite in America like to indulge in Christian-bashing, neglecting to be grateful for the Judeo-Christian teachings that through the Protestant revolution became the basis for democracy.
PERMALINK:
Appreciating Christianity in China | Planet JH News Article: Right Wing Local
Leave a Comment