Following Jesus in China
When Christians in America talk about China it usually is a conversation filled with a sense of foreboding focusing on how hard it must be to follow Jesus in a country that has not historically been seen as friendly to Christians. What I found in on my recent trip was that it is very possible that Christians in the west are the ones who are really at a disadvantage. Why? In many ways it is just too easy to be a Christian in America and other western countries where Christianity has historically been strong.
Consider that on Sunday morning we went to church in Beijing. This church has 5 services each Sunday. Eight hundred in the main auditorium and 500 in an overflow. It is packed for all five services. What was really incredible was that people stood in a line for half and hour before each service just to get a seat. It was near 90 degrees out yet they waited patiently. Twenty minutes before the service and the place was packed. In most churches in America people regularly come in late and leave early.
When the worship team started the singing on the part of the congregation was inspiring. They nearly took the roof of the place. Everyone was engaged and seemed to want to make sure that Jesus knew they were praising Him. There were no casual folks looking to be entertained. They were either legitimate seekers deeply interested in finding out about Jesus or in most cases, already following Him and glad to let the nations know that their Lord is King.
In speaking with the pastor I got an even clearer picture of what it is like for people to follow Jesus in China. There is very little in the way of programs that the church can do to impact the community. Organized church evangelism projects or even programs intended to serve the needy are frowned upon by the government. To actively evangelize is viewed as disturbing the balance and harmony of society. So the church can’t program that. Organized programs to meet the basic needs of people is the role of government. So no church food banks, or clothing drives, or other common ministries that churches carry out in the west.
So how is it that the church is packed and growing if it can’t do evangelism programs or serving ministry for the needs of people? Simple, the church can’t organize these things but individual Christians can do these things. And guess what! They are doing it. Without fancy programs and events and staff organizing things, these followers of Jesus are living out their faith, everywhere, everyday. As a result people ask them about Jesus. When that happens you are free to share the Gospel. If you see a person in need you are free to meet that need, just like the Good Samaritan that Jesus taught about in Luke 15. They are being living witnesses and doing what the Bible tells them to do. As a result Christianity in China is alive and well.
Is it harder to follow Jesus in China. Sure it is. But not for the reasons we usually think. It is harder to follower him there because it is too easy to follow him here. In reality I am not sure what many of us Christians in the west are doing can really be called following Jesus. It is far too easy. There is no cost to it, no deep personal investment. We look to Jesus to be our spiritual and emotional fix-it guy. If suddenly there were no church programs to do ministry I fear that Christian activity in the west would slow to a crawl. In China the opposite is true. They are not handicapped by our expectation that the church does everything. They are instead living for Him no matter what. Their lack of programs has meant that as individuals they own their faith deeply and follow Jesus gladly and with passion. Maybe for them it really is easier to truly follow Jesus. It is harder for them to do church than it is for us, but that is not exactly the same thing as following Jesus.
Latest Update on Ava
Here is the link to Josh’s blog on his 5 year old daughters brain cancer. Hard to hear that doctors are saying 12 to 18 months but inspiring to see a dad who continues to trust God no matter what.
http://joshuajoelhunter.blogspot.com/2010/07/up-down-up.html
As Josh says at the end of the blog, “keep praying”
Ava Heads Home From the Hospital
Here is an update on 4 year old Ava Hunter and her battle with brain cancer. The link is to the blog written by her dad, Josh Hunter. Keep them in your prayers.
http://joshuajoelhunter.blogspot.com/2010/07/avas-home.html
Dan
Blessed are Those Who Mourn
When Your 5 Year Old Has Brain Cancer
I am posting this link to the blog of a friend. Josh and Lisa have a five year old named Ava. Six days ago they found out she had a tangerine sized tumor in her brain. Surgery followed immediately along with the word “malignant” Three days later they learned what kind of malignancy and that medically the doctors have no hope. What Josh has to say about their situation is something that everyone should read. It is an honest and powerful look at how followers of Jesus are to live in the midst of some of the most devastating news imaginable. Please read Josh’s blog, then pray for the Hunters and little Ava. Finally, if you have any ideas for alternative treatment please pass them on to Josh.
http://joshuajoelhunter.blogspot.com/2010/07/today.html
Dan
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
” I am not religious but I am spiritual”. If only I had a dollar for every time I have heard that phrase. It has become the new mantra. People who have or want no affiliation with any organized religious group or tradition, still want to be identified as having some commitment to religious/spiritual beliefs and practices. Being spiritual is worn as a something of a badge of honor. Being religious is seen as archaic, cold, legalistic, and often arrogant. Being spiritual is seen as being free, enlightened, on a path to something higher and more noble and humble. Oddly enough I am convinced that the statement of being spiritual is at its heart a prideful thing.
As the first of His famous statements that we call The Beatitudes, Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the spiritual”. In fact He said the exact opposite. He literally said, “Blessed are those who recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt”. That is what is at heart of what Jesus is saying. It is extremely significant that Jesus says this as the first of the “blessed are you” statements. Before you can ever really experience blessing from God you absolutely must recognize how spiritually bankrupt you are. If you are ever going to recognize that you need God, you have to recognize at the core of your being that you are bankrupt without Him.
Going all the way back in the history of human beings our biggest problem is that we have been trying to live as if we did not need God. Saying “I am spiritual” is more about me than it is about God. In fact it is one more step in the process of trying to be our own gods in charge of our own lives. We have tried to deny our own need for God. Being “spiritual” is about my effort to get in touch with and become something other than what I am. It is about be being good enough to reach a higher spiritual plane. All of that sounds wonderful but it is dependent on me, my effort, my storehouse of personal resources and ability to become something more, something good, or holy, or enlightened.
The problem is we are spiritually bankrupt without Jesus Christ. We just don’t want to admit it. It is said that the first step of recovery is admitting your need. Our first step in spiritual recovery is admitting that we have nothing in ourselves that has any spiritual value. We are totally and utterly dependent on God for our spiritual existence. Paul makes it clear in Colossians 2:13-14 that before we come to faith in Christ, we are spiritually dead. That is just another way of saying spiritually bankrupt. We will never be able to get close to God until we can admit how far from Him we really are and how dependent we are on Him for any spiritual life we might have.
The hurdle that we need to overcome is our pride. We are afraid that if we admit that we have nothing to offer spiritually then we are somehow admitting that we are losers and we will be stuck there. What Jesus says is that we are spiritually empty but that he values us far more than we could ever imagine. In spite of the fact that we are spiritually bankrupt, actually because we are spiritually bankrupt and can do nothing for ourselves, Jesus came and died on a cross to open a treasure-house of spiritual life to us. We will not tap into that storehouse unless we are willing to admit that we are in desperate need of what Jesus offers. When you come to that place in your life you will be blessed beyond measure. Don’t be afraid to admit on a daily basis that you are a sinner saved by grace and totally bankrupt in yourself. Yet, because of what Jesus has done, you are filled spiritually everyday by Jesus who loves you more than you can imagine.
The Paparazzi, Facebook, and Our Need to be Known
I have been thinking recently about the seemingly growing mass of people who do things just to be noticed and known. The examples are so numerous that it is hard to decide which ones NOT to mention. Just think on some headlines over the last few months. Remember “Balloon Boy” and his parents scam to get attention by faking his accidental trip in a hot air balloon? How about “Baseball Taser Dude” who ran onto the field at a Phillies games after calling his dad and asking if it was a good idea? Then there was the copycat the next night. Add to that the countless people who still go on shows like Jerry Springer, or the whole Jon and Kate Plus Eight debacle. Then you have people who play to the paparazzi just to keep getting noticed; Lohan, Hilton, Kardashian, etc, etc. On the far more tragic side I was reminded recently that when Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon on a New York sidewalk the first thing he said was, “I shot John Lennon”. He wanted to be famous and the closest he could get was to be infamous.
So what is it about us that we have this growing need to be known, to the point that we do the ridiculous or even the tragic just to have our proverbial fifteen minutes of fame? I think at the heart of it all it goes back to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and our rebellion against God. Now before you get all distracted by the debate of whether or not Adam and Eve were real people, let’s skip past that to the lesson the story teaches regardless of the historicity of that couple. The point of the story is that human beings are in some sort of rebellion against God and this rebellion, known as sin, has had cosmos altering consequences. We have become alienated from God and from one another. That alienation has produced fear and insecurity, loneliness and shame.
You might be thinking, “Hey, we have always had alienation, fear, and insecurity. What’s different now?” What is different now is two-fold. First, there have always been other social institutions that helped us overcome our alienation and fulfill our need to belong and be known. Once upon a time the tribal group, or community, or family gave us a sense of security, identity, and purpose. We knew people and they knew us. Not simply in the informational sense of knowing, but in the deeper heart sense of knowing. It is more like the sense in Dutch and Afrikaans of “ken” as opposed to “weet”. Weet is informational knowledge, you know about something or someone. Ken is heart knowledge. It is what the Bible speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13:12 when it speaks of a longing for a new day “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” The more mobile we become, the more isolated we become behind our automatic garage doors that allow us to drive into our house without speaking to neighbors, the more we sit on the back porch and not the front stoop, the more we move from place to place and job to job, the more we run the risk of being isolated and alienated and yearning for connection.
The second factor is that on top of the human element there is the divine element. During the rise of the modern era and the commitment to science as having the answers to all our problems, we put God and spirituality on the shelf. We further isolated ourselves from the needs of our soul. Eventually people began to sense that modernism and science did not have all the answers and so an outbreak of being “spiritual” but not “religious” has been sweeping western culture. Why? Because we still have the deep inner need to be known and to know, especially by something or someone greater than ourselves.
In search of that need to be known, to be significant, those already mentioned and many others have taken a decidedly neurotic path. Others have taken a more reasonable and socially acceptable route. The rise in popularity of social media like Facebook or LinkedIn, is in part an attempt to stay connected or reconnect with people who are important to us. Such social media can be a great tool to keep and grow our relationships and give us a sense of place and belonging. Of course it can also fool us into thinking that we have deep and meaningful relationships just because people see our status updates and we have hundreds of friends, some of whom we have never met.
Ultimately all our efforts to connect with one another, to be known by one another, to feel like we are significant and that we matter, will fall woefully short if we do not address the root cause of that alienation. We are alienated from one another on a horizontal plane because we first became alienated on the vertical in our relationship with God. We can have all the human connections we want but until we are connected intimately with God, we will still be lacking and still looking for more. Blaise Pascal said it best; “We all have a God shaped vacuum in our soul that only He can fill”. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about being known, he was speaking of the longing to be known by and to know God in as intimate a way as possible. All our searching for meaning, fame, security, belonging, and connection is at its core the result of a need to know that we are loved by God and to experience that love in deeper and deeper ways.
Newspaper Interview on Risking Yourself for Someone Else
Yesterday I was interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel for an article looking at why some people take the risk of endangering themselves in order to save another person. It was a great opportunity to talk about Jesus command to love our neighbor. I hope you enjoy it. Here is the link: Ethics 101: How Do You Decide To Save a Life?
Love Your Neighbor; Or Not
In a tragic and ironic twist a modern-day Good Samaritan is left to die on the side of the road instead of being helped by the people who pass him by. The phrase “Good Samaritan” has come down to us from a story told by Jesus. In the tale an unknown man is beaten and robbed and left for dead by his attackers. The story is found in The Gospel of Luke 10:25-37. As the man lay beaten on the side of the road he is ignored by a Levite and a Priest, two religious leaders. He is finally helped by a man from Samaria, our Good Samaritan. That Samaritan would normally have been an adversary at best and a sworn enemy at worst. However on this day he showed what it meant to love your neighbor and that was the point of Jesus story, to show us that whoever we come across who has a need is our neighbor.
Recently a woman was being attacked on a New York street. Coming to her rescue was Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax. The woman was able to escape as a result of the Good Samaritan Mr. Tale-Yax. Tragically, during her rescue, Tale-Yax was stabbed several times. He collapsed on the sidewalk, bleeding. During the next hour and a half more than 25 people walked by him. They were all caught on camera as several even stopped and looked at him. At least one man leaned down and shook him but ran off when he saw the pool of blood on the sidewalk beneath his body. The whole time it is obvious from the film that our Good Samaritan was still alive. Eventually he bleed to death.
The story of this fallen hero is not unique and it is not isolated to New York City. Jesus was able to tell the Good Samaritan Parable and give it such a lasting impact because it is all too common, then and now, for people to ignore those in need even if they have to step around them to do so. What made this story particularly unique is that Tale-Yax had tried to break that cycle of personal isolationism by helping a woman in trouble. He refused to ignore the desperate plight of his “neighbor” and acted in a most Christ-like way. He gave his life, not for a friend, but for a person he had never before met.
The additional tragedy is that many will use what happened to our modern-day Good Samaritan as their justification for not getting involved. Rather than being motivated to act in the future because of the callous lack of action by two dozen people, many will pull further back into isolation. “You never know what is really going on and what may happen to you if you try to help”. “It’s best not to get involved”. “You need to think of yourself and your family first”. Certainly the priest and Levite in Jesus’ story used such statement for their own justification. For many of you it will sound wise and prudent to mind your own business and the death of Mr. Tale-Yax serves to reinforce that. My friends, that is an even bigger tragedy. That is evidence of a life lived in fear. Fear of what might happen. Fear of the cost. Fear of the unknown. Fear of hardship or struggle or danger.
Maybe Mr. Tale-Yaz should have ignored the woman being attacked. Maybe he should have crossed to the other side of the street. But what if the next day he read a headline that told of the death of a woman on that corner and of the man who crossed to the other side of the road refusing to help? What then? I suspect that he would have not been able to live with himself knowing that he could have saved her, even at risk to himself. I wonder what the two dozen people who passed by Mr. Tale-Yax felt when they saw not only the headlines, but the video of themselves passing him by? Would their fear from the previous day have been replaced by guilt and shame? Which do they now wish they lived with, the unknown repercussions of loving a neighbor or a lifetime of guilt?
Time and again the Bible calls us to “fear not”. Why? Because it says, “God is with us”. We are told that two people are better than one for if one struggles the other is there to help. When you walk in a relationship with God you are never alone. It doesn’t mean that nothing terrible or painful will never happen to you. It simply means that He is there with you to help you through it. That is all we need ask or hope for, that God be with us at all times to carry us through whatever comes our way. That includes sometimes doing hard things to help and love those around us. It is an effort to love your neighbor. It is sometimes dangerous. But it is extremely Christ-like. People used to have “WWJD” bracelets. It was a big fad for a time. “What Would Jesus Do?”. The answer is simply. He would love His neighbor no matter the cost, no matter the risk, no matter the danger.
Oh, one last thing. Don’t be the kind of person who reads this story, bemoans how bad the world is and who wrong those two dozen passers-by were, and then goes back to life in your little Christian bubble. The easiest thing in the world to do is point out what others should have done and then retire to our own safe haven, thinking we are fine and wonderful simply because we can see what someone else should have done. Why not go out your front door, look the left and the right and ask God what you can do to love your neighbor today. Loving your neighbor and taking a risk seldom requires putting your life at risk. Usually it just requires that we get up off the sofa and open our eyes.
Stephen Baldwin Does Not Need Your Money
Why do Christians continue to miss the point of why things happen in our lives? Why do we keep thinking that the best way for God to be honored and for people to want to follow Jesus is for us to be blessed with wealth, fame, and prestige? I ask this in light of the campaign being waged to restore wealth to Stephen Baldwin that he has apparently lost because he is following Jesus. A website called Restore Stephen Baldwin has been established in order to financially support him.
The thinking is that he is being left out of roles or declined roles, and thus he is loosing income because of his faith in Christ. So people in Hollywood are smirking and saying “so what good is it that you are following Jesus?” As a result they are mocking Stephen and mocking God. The people behind the website think that if Christians around the world sent money to help restore Stephen financially that this would be an amazing statement for the power of God.
What are they thinking? What about the Apostle Paul bringing glory to God by saying 10I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. 11I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:10-13
We don’t only bring glory to God by being rich and powerful. In fact, we usually do not. Paul is saying that we bring glory to God by learning to be content no matter what situation we find ourselves in. How big a statement would it be to the people of Hollywood if they saw Stephen happier than ever even though he had less? What if they saw him at peace and content regardless of how much or how little he had? What if they saw his family actually be stronger in their relationships even though they no longer had big houses and expensive cars? I wonder what that would say about the power of God then?
Hollywood is called tinsel town for a reason. Most everything is fake and designed to be shiny for a season. But the seasons and the glitter don’t last. Faith in Jesus, contentment in Christ, finding your sufficiency in God alone, those things are lasting and these are the things that lead people to faith in Jesus. Every Hollywood star goes through a down time in life. What if they saw a peer who was actually content and secure in Christ and not the glitter?
Jesus doesn’t need Stephen Baldwin, you, or me to be rich and powerful. He needs us to be content in Him no matter what.
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