The Struggles of Chinese Scholars in Their Spiritual Journey

By Eugene Hong

Thank God for giv­ing Chris­tians an evan­ge­lis­tic vision for Chi­na’s rur­al areas in the 80s, and then a sim­i­lar vision for bring­ing the gospel to thou­sands of over­seas Chi­nese schol­ars in the 90s. In recent years, in North Amer­i­ca, count­less evan­ge­lis­tic Bible stud­ies in var­i­ous forms, designed specif­i­cal­ly for Chi­nese schol­ars, have been start­ed near almost every major uni­ver­si­ty and Chi­nese church. Nev­er have there been so many Chi­nese schol­ars study­ing abroad who have giv­en their lives to Christ. More­over, by the grace of God, hun­dreds of them have been called to pur­sue for­mal the­o­log­i­cal train­ing to bet­ter pre­pare them­selves for extend­ing the king­dom of God.

None of these are acci­den­tal; it is God’s tim­ing. God’s hid­den plan to evan­ge­lize the Chi­nese has now been revealed to us. His plan is to bring the Chi­nese schol­ars over­seas and present them with the Gospel. After they have received their new life in Christ, they are then able to return and wit­ness to the oth­er Chi­nese elite in Chi­na.

How­ev­er, we must face the fact that although many Chi­nese schol­ars have received Christ, few of them are able to devote them­selves to church min­istry. Their spir­i­tu­al lives are still very imma­ture, per­haps only will­ing to receive and not to sac­ri­fice. Some of them do not feel that they can become a part of the Amer­i­can or Chi­nese church. Their spir­i­tu­al jour­ney has not come to the point where they can pro­vide lead­er­ship among them­selves and estab­lish their own church. From these obser­va­tions, we can bet­ter under­stand that not only are these Chi­nese schol­ars fac­ing many obsta­cles unique to their back­ground, but they are also strug­gling in their spir­i­tu­al growth in a unique way. These spir­i­tu­al strug­gles, from my point of view, are a con­se­quence of how they resolved their con­flicts when receiv­ing Christ. In this arti­cle, I intend to dis­cuss five of their most com­mon strug­gles and hope to bring a bet­ter under­stand­ing of their sit­u­a­tion to church­es and evan­ge­lis­tic orga­ni­za­tions.

First, to some Chi­nese schol­ars, the great­est obsta­cle to receiv­ing Christ was their belief in mate­r­i­al athe­ism and sci­en­tif­ic athe­ism. The for­mer is to deny God’s exis­tence onto­log­i­cal­ly, and the lat­ter is to deny God’s exis­tence epis­te­mo­log­i­cal­ly. They claim that if they could believe that there was a God, they would have no prob­lem in being bap­tized.

Bible stud­ies usu­al­ly have lit­tle effect on these peo­ple. How­ev­er, if they hap­pen to hear a speech by a knowl­edge­able speak­er who has a sound under­stand­ing of the rela­tion­ship between var­i­ous philoso­phies and Chris­tian­i­ty, they enjoy it very much. At the same time, they are able to real­ize the absur­di­ty of mate­ri­al­ism and sci­en­tism.

It is great­ly dif­fer­ent from the sci­en­tif­ic atti­tude in search of truth. Sci­ence has nev­er denied God. On the con­trary, man has dis­cov­ered how metic­u­lous and orga­nized nature is from sci­en­tif­ic research. God cre­at­ed and planned all these things so that man would know that this metic­u­lous design could nev­er have hap­pened by chance-but by God. The break­through that comes with this ratio­nal think­ing is the real­iza­tion that there must be a God. We can only explain the won­der and com­plex­i­ty of human beings and the uni­verse in a ratio­nal way based on God’s exis­tence.

Some schol­ars believe that the great­est obsta­cle to becom­ing a Chris­t­ian is in believ­ing that God exists. There­fore, once they are con­vinced that God exists, believ­ing that Jesus is God seems to be the log­i­cal next step. Thus, they are bap­tized, think­ing to them­selves that they have com­plet­ed the jour­ney to become a Chris­t­ian. Wor­ship, Bible study and prayer all become unnec­es­sary. There is no change in their life since they believe that becom­ing a Chris­t­ian sim­ply means to believe that God exists. To help them to become a true con­vert, we must raise their aware­ness of the fol­low­ing ques­tion: Am I to a large degree only a the­ist, and not a fol­low­er of Christ who bears His cross?

Sec­ond, anoth­er obsta­cle to Chi­nese schol­ars in becom­ing Chris­t­ian is in not con­sid­er­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty is use­ful to their coun­try, the peo­ple, or even to them­selves. They are usu­al­ly con­cerned about the well-being of their coun­try and their peo­ple. They dis­like the Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy. How­ev­er, they con­clude that Chris­tian­i­ty is only a prod­uct of human soci­ety’s evo­lu­tion­ary process, inher­it­ed indeed from Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da.

When these schol­ars trav­el abroad, they gain more access to infor­ma­tion­al resources. In recent years, some of the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian church­es have tried dili­gent­ly to take up the respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for soci­ety. They have been empha­siz­ing to the Chi­nese schol­ar how the Chris­t­ian church has been involved in advanc­ing mod­ern sci­ence, democ­ra­cy, moral stan­dards, and West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. After these schol­ars have heard gospel pre­sen­ta­tions and exam­ined many of the his­tor­i­cal resources, they real­ize that the God in whom Chris­tians believe is a God who rules over and cares about every­thing.

They also dis­cov­er the ulti­mate truth that every­thing is found in God. Chris­tian­i­ty is no longer what they had thought, exist­ing only in church wor­ship and activ­i­ties. The doc­trines of Chris­tian­i­ty can in fact apply to every aspect of life and soci­ety. These schol­ars then come to believe that, in com­par­i­son to oth­er reli­gions or schools of phi­los­o­phy, Chris­tian­i­ty can be more effec­tive in advanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion. They are trou­bled by the fact that after the break­down of Chi­nese tra­di­tion­al val­ues and Com­mu­nism, the Chi­nese are no longer capa­ble of believ­ing in any kind of ide­al­ism. Now they become encour­aged by the pow­er of Chris­tian­i­ty. They become Chris­tians because they are con­vinced that Chris­tian­i­ty can help the peo­ple and the coun­try.

How­ev­er, they are not inter­est­ed in con­cepts such as eter­nal life, the res­ur­rec­tion, the Sec­ond Com­ing of Christ, and the Final Judg­ment. They are con­cerned only in how Chris­tian­i­ty can save soci­ety and are unaware that Christ came to save each of our lives. To help them to become a true con­vert, we must raise their aware­ness of the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Do I believe in the doc­trines of Chris­tian­i­ty and their moral stan­dards only because I desire to replace the doc­trines of Com­mu­nism and their moral stan­dards? Do I have a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ?

Third­ly, some Chi­nese schol­ars respect com­plete indi­vid­ual free­dom. They do not trust any orga­ni­za­tion or orga­ni­za­tion­al per­son­nel. Their biggest road­block to becom­ing Chris­t­ian is that church­es and the Com­mu­nist par­ty are so much alike when it comes to all kinds of meet­ings. They iden­ti­fy Bible stud­ies with Mao’s doc­trine study class and pas­tors with the polit­i­cal instruc­tors of the Com­mu­nist par­ty. They think that both Chris­t­ian church­es and the Com­mu­nist par­ty are pro­vid­ing some kind of sys­tem aimed to restrict the indi­vid­u­al’s free­dom.

How­ev­er, some of them begin to be attract­ed to Jesus Christ’s unique char­ac­ter and the imag­in­able pow­er of His Word. In their own under­stand­ing, the essence and the strength of the vital­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty comes from God’s direct call­ing and sal­va­tion of each indi­vid­ual. Sal­va­tion is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. It depends on the inner faith giv­en by God direct­ly rather than by par­tic­i­pa­tion in the church. When these peo­ple become Chris­tians, they pay much atten­tion to enjoy­ing God’s com­pan­ion­ship in their qui­et time. How­ev­er, they do not like to join the church or any church groups. They have a very ‘spir­i­tu­al’ phrase that they like to use: “I come to church to see God, not the peo­ple.” They do not respect or care about pas­tors, dea­cons, or broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ. In fact, they are con­fused about the rela­tion­ship between faith and love. As John once said “For any­one who does not love his broth­er, whom he has seen, can­not love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). Here John empha­sizes Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship.

To help these schol­ars to become true con­verts, we must raise their aware­ness of the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Do I overem­pha­size my per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Christ and neglect the impor­tance of fel­low­ship with oth­er Chris­tians? Do I under­stand that join­ing church min­istries and becom­ing a part of the church are ingre­di­ents to my spir­i­tu­al growth?

Fourth­ly, these schol­ars are in agree­ment with Con­fu­cian­ism. They are con­cerned about the actu­al­iza­tion of an ide­al per­son­al­i­ty. Their biggest obsta­cle is that if all reli­gions are equiv­a­lent, in the sense of help­ing peo­ple to do right, and Chris­tian­i­ty is only one of many reli­gions, why then should I believe only in Chris­tian­i­ty? They believe that man is good by nature, and there­fore if he is pro­vid­ed with good phi­los­o­phy or reli­gion, he can try hard to become a saint. Through Com­mu­nist edu­ca­tion, one can become a true Com­mu­nist.

How­ev­er, they have seen that nei­ther Com­mu­nism nor Con­fu­cian­ism has been suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing its goal of ide­al­ism. The Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion only made peo­ple more sus­pi­cious and defen­sive. When these peo­ple come over­seas, they are attract­ed by the gen­uine love of Chris­tians and their obser­va­tion that Chris­tians are liv­ing their lives in a way that is above the moral stan­dards of both Con­fu­cian­ism and Com­mu­nism. They are deeply moved by the good deeds of Chris­tians and thus become bap­tized.

After attend­ing the church for awhile they dis­cov­er that some indi­vid­ual Chris­tians are not as good as they may want them to be. They then begin to doubt their faith. To help them to become true con­verts, we must raise their aware­ness of the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Is my faith based on a mod­el Chris­t­ian? Or is my faith based on the Word of God? Have I put my faith in these good Chris­tians rather than in God?

Fifth­ly, pos­si­bly the most com­mon obsta­cle for schol­ars to over­come is that many Chi­nese schol­ars only believe in and rely upon them­selves. They are their own God; every­thing they have is a result of their own effort. They believe every­thing in this world is gov­erned by the law of objec­tiv­i­ty, which peo­ple can rough­ly under­stand. Where there is a will, there is a way. When these schol­ars come over­seas, they face great pres­sures from study, work and their fam­i­ly.

Their hard­ships make them real­ize their lim­i­ta­tions. Their pride in them­selves is crushed. When they face obsta­cles that are too great for them to over­come, only Chris­tians and church­es step for­ward to help them. In over­com­ing their hard­ships with the help of these Chris­tians, they expe­ri­ence God.

They are deeply moved by the love of God, and that knowl­edge can actu­al­ly help them rely on such a pow­er­ful God. There­fore, they are bap­tized. How­ev­er, after they have been bap­tized they often have some regrets when they real­ize they need to sac­ri­fice their time and even mon­ey to be part of a church. To help them to become true con­verts, we must raise their aware­ness of the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Am I a Chris­t­ian because I love God? Or am I a Chris­t­ian because I love the things that God can give me?

The above cas­es are only for dis­cus­sion pur­pos­es, the real cir­cum­stances may be more com­plex. Many peo­ple have more than one obsta­cle when they meet Christ, and God may lead them to break through these obsta­cles. In gen­er­al, these cas­es and strug­gles are relat­ed both to the unique social and polit­i­cal back­ground of the Main­land Chi­nese, and to the ways that we lead these schol­ars to Christ.

In the first two cas­es, the faith was not built on Jesus Christ; Jesus has not been known to them. The mes­sages that they have heard are pre-evan­ge­lis­tic mes­sages. The char­ac­ter­is­tics and pur­pose of these mes­sages are to remove the road­blocks from under­stand­ing the Gospel. These mes­sages are not aimed to bring them to Christ.

In the third case, the Truth has been taught to them but not in a com­plete fash­ion. There­fore, it leads to some unde­sired con­se­quences. In the last two cas­es, the Gospel was basi­cal­ly accept­ed because of Chris­t­ian love and good deeds. How­ev­er, in the mean­time, God’s Word and Truth has not been under­stood prop­er­ly. The schol­ars may not be clear on what they real­ly believe, and there­fore as a nat­ur­al result, their spir­i­tu­al growth has been hin­dered.

-Eugene Hong, from Chi­na, is the pas­tor of Faith Chi­nese Bap­tist Church of Van-cou­ver, Cana­da. This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, March, 1997, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp.47–49.