It is difficult to itemize all of my preconceptions
regarding China
and Communism. I won’t even try. Suffice to say that what I have seen is
vastly different from what I thought I would see.
I remember visiting Ukraine
and seeing run-down Soviet era apartment complexes and other signs of crumbling
infrastructure. I wondered if I would
see much of the same in China. I did.
And I did not. We were told
during our China Briefing that everything we’ve heard about China
was true and conversely, nothing we’ve heard about China
is true. That paradox works because in a
country where the population exceeds 1.3 Billion souls, everything you’ve heard
IS true . . . somewhere.
On a whole I’d have to say that no place in the world matches
the United States’
overall level of development in terms of infrastructure and social
systems. But in places, like China,
there are pockets of development that far exceed anything I’ve ever seen back
home.
I didn’t expect a communist government to be concerned with
culture and heritage. Yet in all of the
cities I have visited there is seems to be great effort and resources expended
to provide the populace with some of the most beautiful parks I have ever
seen. Trees. Flowers.
Gardens. Fountains. Immaculate landscaping. Statutes and Monuments. Reminders everywhere not so much of the more
recent communist past but of the ancient heritage that Chinese people share.
Every morning in every park scores of elderly people gather
to exercise. Some of them simply
walk. Some of them do Tai Chi or Kung
Fu….not the full-on fighting that we in the West associate with martial arts,
but the slow, methodic discipline that more resembles a dance. And they dance too! Old couples, women with women and even men
with men practice ball-room dancing on the wide sidewalks of the parks. No wonder Chinese people enjoy such long life
spans.
The Paradox again. It
is a place that is both full of life and a place that is devoid of life. Every city I visited teems with people. Walking thru one National Park was like
walking in an American Mall the day after Thanksgiving! I see in the faces of these countless people
a certain resignation. This is the only
life they’ve ever known and so they live it.
They enjoy their culture and their heritage, they enjoy their life-spans
and a health-care system that probably isn’t as bad as we make it out to
be. Yet most of them have never heard of
Jesus. They don’t know the price He paid
for them. It’s not really LIFE they
enjoy. It’s a façade. A veneer.
From everything I’ve ever read or heard, I know the Church
here is thriving like no other in the history of Christianity even though it is
hidden from us. It is alive. It is growing exponentially. At some point I believe the number of
Christians in China
will reach a critical mass that will result in a majority of the populace
choosing to follow Christ. That shift
will result in wholesale policy changes for this great nation. Policy follows prophecy (preaching and
speaking life). Nations have long feared
the numerical strength of the Chinese. I
say, the gates of hell should quiver before the numerical strength of Chinese
Christians committed to completing the Great Commission. I have heard that Chinese Christians don’t want
us to pray against the persecution they experience. Persecution is the crucible in which their
faith is refined. But I do pray for the
day when this great nation becomes the greatest missionary incubator the world
has ever known.
