EV Conversations from the Past

August 27th, 2007

by: John Tang

This past Monday, I had an opportunity to talk to a guy named Fabio while I was EVing. We had a pretty long conversation basically centered on truth; he had already heard the gospel message from his mom, and although I was able to share it in brief during our conversation, he seemed very adamant in his own views. Fabio was basically opposed to any form of organized religion because of its structure and rigidity, which he felt hindered the individual person from having his or her own personal experience. He was, on the contrary, all about the personal experience of spirituality. This experience, to him, superseded any doctrinal or theological affiliations. Our ultimate goal, in his opinion, is to have some form of personal spiritual experience, whether it is through Christianity or Buddhism or even an individual creation of deity that you choose. In the end, he believed that it’s what you experience that’s true, since it’s an experience that is real and true to you. Truth, then, is whatever is perceived through the eyes of man.
After hearing him share much of his own testimony about his progress through religion and asking some questions, we proceeded to talk about the idea of truth itself. Our conversation ranged from various topics such as: nature, Christ, the apostles, the Bible, and personal experiences. What I tried to emphasize to him was that truth exists apart from the individual and therefore must be examined apart from the opinion of the multitudes as well the personal experiences of the individual; in the end, the Truth exists apart from any beliefs that we can conceive on our own.
Our conversation basically ended with him telling me that he’s heard the gospel from his mom and he doesn’t want to hear it or believe in it. While he did say that he saw good things in Christianity, in the end, he was adamant about that the pursuit of personal truth and the experience of finding this truth hold absolute weight.
I do agree to some extant with what Fabio said about the lack of personal experience within structured religion. The lack of a personal testimony for believers who have either been raised in the church or gone to church mindlessly has left these same believers without life in their worship to God because they feel like they can’t personally relate to the work of God. In fact, there are reminders in the Old Testament for Israel and even in the New Testament for believers to remember the work that God has personally done for them. After explaining the work of Christ in saving the Gentiles, Paul commands the Gentile believers in Ephesus to “remember that you were at that time separate from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought bear by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:12-13). It’s often when we remember the work that God did in our lives that we grow a more personal love for Him; all Christians need a testimony, and Fabio is right in talking about the need for a personal experience.
However, what doesn’t sit right with me is that Fabio placed such a high value on this personal experience that he was willing to diminish the existence of any absolute truth for the sake of experience. He essentially placed emotions above truth. So you can believe anything you want, as long as you have a spiritual experience or emotion about it. While that does solve the problem of the emptiness felt by many today who have never had any personal experience with Christ, this is ultimately a solution that will never fully satisfy. We’ll always hunger for more spirituality and emotional experiences until we finally come to the true source of spiritual life. “The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply” (Psalm 16:4).

Struggling Asian American Christian

I joined the local outreach team in March not because I’m good at evangelism, but because it’s one of the things I most believe in and struggle with the most.

Today was especially hard. My mom surprised me this morning by telling me that I had to take her to the Chinese Cemetery in East Los Angeles for Qing Ming, a Confucian weekend-long holiday that involves ancestor worship.

Each year, my extended family observes Qing Ming and Qong Yang, a similar holiday around October. My aunts, uncles and cousins would meet at the graves of my dad and grandparents to offer them prayers, incense and burnt paper money. Honestly, aside from the rituals and traditions, it was a time to celebrate how close we’ve been through three generations. Today, though, it was just with my sister and I because of scheduling problems.

These seemingly innocuous ceremonies began to trouble me when I went to college and examined my faith. How could I ask my relatives in the supposed afterworld to bless me when I now desire to worship God alone? This issue and, indirectly, filial piety, were on my mind in Berkeley. I remember buying a book called “Chinese Christians In America: Conversion, Assimilation and Adhesive Identities”. There was a passage that said:

“Generally speaking, when they are able to de-religionize a specific Chinese tradition, these Chinese Christians claim it as compatible with the Christian faith; when it seems impossible to de-religionize a tradition, they reject it; when it looks possible but difficult to separate the religious dimension from the cultural dimension in a tradition, they manifest ambivalent anxiety and tend to avoid it” (133).

That was what I did: avoid it. I lived 10 years around Berkeley, only returning to SoCal for a few days in the summer and winter. So, I was able to avoid these ceremonies until I moved back a year and a half ago.

When I’m with my extended family at these events, there are about 20 of us and I could somewhat blend into anonymity. Although I can speak passable Chinese in conversation, I have trouble sharing my faith in a second language, which means I tended to say very little and was shy at these events. One time, feeling quite nervous, I excused myself to the restroom for half an hour rather than participate. It was quite obvious and I could see that my mom was disappointed.

But today I tried to be braver. I dug out my Cantonese dictionary and worked out a script to say to my mom: “Of course I respect my late father and grandparents. But I am a Christian and cannot mix these beliefs.” I thought I could be like Naaman, who tried to maintain a clear conscience in a pagan environment (2 Kings 5:18-19). I thought I could just drive my mom there, place the flowers, step back and let her do her thing. It turned out I was foolish.

With only my family around, my mom became very insistent that I bow even though I declined to. She accused me of having no respect for her, my family and our culture. She tugged at me and pushed, trying to get me to bow after her. I stood my ground. She’d cut me off when I tried to explain myself. Then she accused me of being heartless and reminded me how my grandfather took care of me when I was a baby. I saw how much this meant to her. In her eyes, I was thumbing my nose at her father.

Many thoughts raced through my head. I remember reading Asian American Christians arguing that ancestor worship is really ancestor “veneration”, and that there is no problem with bowing toward a tombstone. After all, they’re not God, they would say. I had so vehemently disagreed with them at the time, but what was I feeling now? I also remembered reading Shusaku Endo’s “Silence”, which was about a 17^th-century Portuguese missionary in Japan who apostatized after being tortured by the Japanese military and convinced that he was corrupting their culture. I remembered in college how the student president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship denied his faith after visiting his dying grandfather in Taiwan and refusing to believe that he would go to hell.

At the end of the two-hour standoff, my mom declared that I had to bow or we cannot leave and she would disown me. What could I do? I thought of my sister, who stood mostly silent behind her the whole time. Maybe the best I could do, in this situation, was to explain to my sister what I believed.

I took my sister to the side and told her how there was no power in bowing to our ancestors (1Cor. 8:4), and that I did not want to stumble her as she’s been coming to church with me (1 Cor. 8: 9-13). To end this impasse, I suggested to my sister that I’ll just give a half-nod toward my grandparents but that it will be totally meaningless to me and that the Bible says to love and worship God above all else. I also asked her to come to church with me again so that we could get good advice about how to better deal with this situation. She agreed.

It’s a pathetic compromise. Having been a Christian for so long, I am shaken that it’s only now that I’m confronting this conflict in my family. I may have hurt my witness and sinned greatly. My solace is in reading the last chapter of the Book of John, where Jesus lovingly forgives Peter for his denial.

Be Shamed, Not Ashamed

This is a short excerpt taken from one of John Piper’s sermons, The Gospel is the Power of God unto Salvation. We often encounter various stumbling blocks to our evangelism—fears, insecurities, apathy, complacency, etc. But I think most often our biggest stumbling block is shame—that is, we are ashamed of the gospel, which should be our only grounds for boasting. We can’t evangelize because our shame overrides our confidence in the gospel, which upon deeper consideration, is completely irrational, because if the gospel saved sinners like us, who is to say that it can’t save other sinners? But John Piper does well to convince us of the reasons why Jesus and Paul were not ashamed of the gospel, and why we shouldn’t be either.

Be Shamed, but not Ashamed

Last week I focused on the first words of Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.” I tried to make plain that there is a difference between being shamed for the gospel and being ashamed of the gospel. If you are a faithful Christian, you will be shamed for the gospel. That is, you will be the target of shaming behavior. But there is a very good reason why you do not have to be ashamed when that happens.

I compared Paul’s reason with Jesus’ reason for not being ashamed when they were shamed for the gospel. Hebrews 12:2 says, “For the joy set before Him [Jesus] endured the cross, despising the shame.” The shaming behavior against Jesus was as ugly and cruel and demeaning as it gets. But instead of letting the shame eat him up, or make him ashamed, or turn him into someone as weak and ugly as his shamers, he fixed his heart on the joy set before him. In other words, the assured triumph of his death and resurrection to save sinners and vindicate his righteousness and bring him home to God kept him from being ashamed or disobedient. When he was tempted to feel ashamed, he focused his mind on the joy set before him. He endured short-term pain because of long-term gain.

And Paul was like that. He said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” – I am not ashamed of the message and the reality of Christ crucified for sinners and raised with power and saving all who trust in him. Why not? Because “[the gospel] is the power of God for [unto] salvation to everyone who believes.” This is the same way that Jesus overcame feelings of shame when he was shamed for the gospel. Jesus looked to the joyful triumph of his cross and resurrection; Paul looked to the joyful triumph of the gospel in eternal salvation.

We do not avoid feelings of shame by altering the gospel to make it popular and inoffensive (see I Corinthians 1:18). We avoid feelings of shame by remembering that the gospel is going to be vindicated in the end. We remind ourselves that the gospel alone brings forgiven sinners to final, everlasting joy. Nothing in the world can do this except the gospel of Jesus Christ. Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam – they do not have a Savior who can solve the problem of separation from a holy God through sin, and offer sinners hope by grace and not works. Only one message saves sinners and brings them safely into the presence of God – the gospel of Jesus Christ. It alone is the power of God unto salvation.

Therefore, Paul would say – Jesus himself would say – suffer, yes. Be misunderstood, yes. Be shamed, yes. But do not be ashamed. Because the message of God’s saving work in Christ is the only final triumphant message in the world. Short-term pain. Long-term gain. For the joy set before you, for the salvation that only the gospel can gain, take up your cross, follow Jesus and despise the shame.

“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).

Soli Deo Gloria.

The Gospel in 6 Minutes

John Piper presents the gospel in 6 minutes.