Thoughts About China, Pilgrims, and Visiting Uncles.

Dana’s Uncle Roy came up for a visit from Texas last week. His work takes him all over to different places and meeting new faces, so he is alway interesting to talk to, but this visit I found one conversation particularly interesting.

He was telling us about his last trip to China and was explaining how Communist China, maybe seeing the disastrous campaign of the old Soviet Union trying to douse any Christianity, has actually established a Christian “church of state”. In the established church, anyone who is willing to register themselves with the government, is free to attend and worship at the appropriate times. No doubt the governments gain is two fold with this system. 1, it allows them the public image of presenting a church to the rest of the world, and 2 I’m sure that they are keeping their “eye” on the registered congregation.

There is a catch with the system however. You’re aren’t permitted to witness to others. Your faith has to stay completely personal, remain completely quiet.

When I first heard this, I thought this was a bad thing and my natural response was to become upset. After all, it’s not just a Biblical principle the government is stepping on, but also the human right behind freedom of speech. I also thought of history and how the Pilgrims faced a similar law in Holland back in 1620, and was a contributing factor as to why they left, after settling there for 11 years non-the-less, to discover the Americas.

But then I thought about this for a minute… I found it very ironic. The state has left the only form of witness that the Chinese Christian has as a living testimony; that is, the outward difference that Christ made on the inside of his/her life. The ironic part about this is that this form of witness is, and has always been, more effective then trying to “talk someone into it”. (Or in Western Cultures this is more often ‘guilting’ or scaring someone into it.)

I started thinking. If I really boiled this down and injected it into my day to day personal life, I wonder what it would look like? How would I be different if I knew my only outward expression of what I feel changing on the inside could be the way I choose to live? When I think about this further, another irony hits me. Ultimately isn’t this how people people view Christians anyway? Aren’t they just watching and waiting to see if our belief matches our behavior? I find this very interesting.