A Chinese Mirror for the West’s Uncertainty

The Banks of the Tai Hu Lake, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province

By Joseph Boyd (August, 2007)

I came to China, planning on learning Chinese Philosophy and appeasing my wife’s family, who were waiting to play with the grandkids and teach them respectable Shanghainese. Because of my background in apologetics, I delighted in the opportunity to improve my Chinese debate skills and polish my performance in Chinese by allowing a friend of the family, a venerable traditional opera singer, to teach me a few choice songs for my operatic repertoire and let me perform with her. Things went better than anticipated, but the study of philosophy suffered greatly, and I became a television figure in a couple months, winning a television talent show that opened a lot of opportunities for me in the realm of media. Looking back on it, a few lessons learned over my last few years in China are clearer to me. 

My life in the world of Chinese media has been sobering, a jarring reintroduction to the world of doubts that I had encountered briefly before, but that I had talked down through a cloud of academic terms in flustered act of self-preservation. My technique of using calm response and a plethora of approaches to shock opponents from their high horse of “all-dissenters-are-ignorant-fundamentalist” failed me because of my struggle to use this language with the same sort of aplomb. For the first time, I found myself in the place that most church-goers have expressed to me, in frustration, a place where I was at a loss of words to respond comprehensively to attack. Now, even when I communicate my ideas in Chinese, in relative fluidity, the boundaries of my language and expression are so painfully obvious that people are not willing to invest the time to work through them with me, merely brushing me off as unlearned. I can finally empathize with the high school students that would say to their friends, “ask my pastor, he knows!”, when what they were really saying was, “talk to someone whose vocabulary and manner of expression are more convincing than mine!” I found that the first problem with talking about the issues that we are called to address is a matter of vocabulary! I never thought about it, or worried about it in my teaching before, but word building is a big part of discipleship! 

People here in China and in the States exhibit a marked similarity in that they cling to the belief that the only thing worth fretting about is their immediate needs. Abstraction is something that most people only do with money, and their goals pertaining to what they would do if they acquired it… talking in remote terms about the kinds of pleasure that would be experienced and the kinds of things that would be done to spend it. Religion is seen by many an educated person (especially here, in a Communist land that follow Marx’s maxim, “Religion is the Opiate of the People”) as a necessary crutch, directly related to the culture in which you feel comfortable and accepted. It is seen by the vast majority as worse than useless, if you have any talent or drive on your own. 

One friend of mine, the son of a high ranking Communist official, put it eloquently; “I am not interested in doing good so that I can sit at Jehovah’s right hand when I die, or see Jesus face to face… I only want to do what I can do in this life time to give myself purpose and fulfill my responsibilities!” And while the sentiment is noble and valorous, I know this man, better than he thinks I do, and what he means is simply, “I am above religion and am responsible for my own destiny!” It is a statement of disregard both for the possibility that he is wrong and for the origins of the duties that he proposes to uphold with his independence. But, more than this, it is an attitude of scorn that keeps his philosophical balloon afloat, staring down any encroacher that might think to pop its fragile thesis. 

I find that there are only a few thoughts here, bandied about as deep, are held by the vast majority of the population that masquerade as folk-philosophers. These thoughts are very similar to those which are held in the west as “ultimate questions” for the Christian faith, such as the “if-God-is-good-why-is-there-so-much-suffering” type. They are couched in the terms of personal doubt, most often, but are heard at first and used without restraint by those wishing to appear deep and close discussion on subjects that would otherwise prompt squirming. They are polished in their settings, which appear to be positive attitudes and hopeful aspirations, but are inward deaths to the hope that there is meaning and a life beyond the grave. 

The greatest single doubt that has appeared to me is “How do you know that all of us are like you?” which is immediately expected to lead to a retraction of sweeping universalisms or assumptions as to others’ existence. Yet again, postmodernists struggle to say in so many big words what the East has congratulated itself for achieving for centuries, the attitude that blatant self-contradiction is not madness but spirituality. Another tactic is to directly remind us of the atrocities that Christians have committed throughout history, while the final act to defuse questions without theistic answers is to ascribe their sense of unconcern to a god “if he exists.” In this observation, I have been able to come to the conclusion that sweeping universals are not less than adequate to describe the human condition, for scarily, the Chinese peasant and the American college student respond to their uncertainties in identical functions of logic. 

The Chinese way of addressing mystery is two fold. One friend aptly put it, “if you put two paintings side by side, and ask the Chinese which is most beautiful, we will always say that they most abstract or obscure is the most beautiful. If you place a weird cult next to a clear teaching, the Chinese will always be prone to the thought that the cult is most likely more powerful.” But, there is another way of cherishing the mystery, so that it remains such, which is the cultural trait of mutually agreeing to overlook a difficult issue. Now, the idea that there is an answer to mystery and that this answer is desirable for the resolution of problems and the progress of society has been embraced at every level, excepting the level of philosophical questions. 

Theism turns up in the Chinese vocabulary quite often, from the pedestrian uttering the word “God!” after being nearly missed by a hurtling motorcycle, to the insistence that “happy marriages have been sealed in heaven”. There are many oblique references to the presence of a greater power, and many traditions that point back to a more philosophical understanding of that force. But, by in large, these accidental references are filtered out by the cultural conditioning, which makes sure that these intuitive feels are divested of a specific meaning. Thus, you may avoid rejecting the existence of God, at least in everyday life, and skillfully outmaneuver any compelling to assert his existence as well. 

And, I have questioned myself, as I live here, in one of the most artificial of all environments, in a state that controls reality and the expressed perceptions of reality, as to the nature of the reality of Christian thought and the need of others for our beliefs. It seems that many people are more than happy to live in ignorance and reject the proposition that they have a need for God. We, being creatures of the herd, can very easily listen to those controlled expressions and convince ourselves that it is so… for, as the Chinese often say, “when you are hungry, all you need is a full belly; when you are full, all you need is a little entertainment”. Meaninglessness in life can be explained away through theories of social responsibility, and a yearning for the divine trumped up to an evolutionary desire to improve the future. And, who is to say, how can you say, that this is wrong. What universally condemns man so that he would find a need to counteract his self-contradiction? None is too apparent from within the culture itself, a culture made up of ignoring awkward silences. 

The experience that best illustrates my recent dawning came as I visited the little Taoist island in the middle of lake Tai-Hu, 90 kilometers from Shanghai. Here, a veritable “Storybook Land” effect had been achieved by throwing every god of local or national significance together in a concrete and chicken wire grotto shrine, surrounding a monkey god and a cross-eyed reclining Buddha. The kitschy cave, artfully sculpted in the man-made stone, only served to sober me to a similar decline in my own culture. I passed an alcove where a Buddha’s head had been broken off, a mantelpiece for some family that would undoubtedly burn scented candles to honor it a couple times a year. And, it struck me, that this is where those who refuse to eradicate contradiction finally find themselves. On every side, those who hawk incense, here a philosophical metaphor for wonder, cry out to have their products bought and burned for a price far above their costs; much like those who pander CGI movies in the west to stir wonder in a generation of apathetic thrill-seekers, waiting to be impressed. The reality is that those who believe everything, who refuse to allow themselves the priority of rejecting mysteries that do not explain mysteries, will have their sense of wonder made into an exploited consumer market. Those who believe that a full stomach is the highest goal will turn a profit, while worshiping another mystery that veils the truth of the universe from view, the instincts of human desire. 

I believe that there must be a time when this occurs to others, maybe after years of sitting in a religious theme park for a few boring years, the incense sellers may be struck with a question of purpose. Then, the few exploiters will stand next to their shrines and wonder why, for a split second, mystery exerts such a power over the minds of man that they will willingly spend their lives pursuing it, without ever demanding that they get to the bottom of things… and when this thought flits through their head, they’ll go back to their cries of “Incense! Incense! A dollar a stick!” and forget all about it. 

Even though it has been humbling, and it has challenged my faith, I am glad that I came to slog through my personal philosophy of life amongst the jaded Chinese; for it has shown me that my first responsibility is to know God, and then to let God shock me by how He can convince those who do not believe that He exists without philosophical arguments, but through my simple obedience. Spending time in a country where Christianity is technically illegal has helped me feel connected with the roots of my faith, and given me insight into what is truly important in the ethereal realms of theology. It has also proven in my heart that man’s fallen condition is universal truth, provable from any cultural perspective. The doubts, the fears, and the gut wrenching sensation of having your faith tossed away in contempt by those who know little and care less about the world – has been worth it, for it proves to me His reality. Even though God can be proven as a philosophical necessity, and regardless of the fact that He is the only reason in life that makes sense, it is still a decision that each man must make on His own. These were the surroundings that allowed the church of old to look out upon the world, smile in the face of death, and formulate an apologetic so simple and vibrant that it floored the wisdom of their age. And these are the simplicities that can not be forgotten or overlooked in a quest for orthodoxy today… because they are orthodoxy.

The Monkey Buddha of Wuxi