Tibet: An elderly Tibetan women holding a prayer wheel on the Lhasa’s pilgrimage circuit of Barkhor.
Image Taken By: Luca Galuzzi – www.galuzzi.it
Politics can be very confusing issues, and I believe God is using the authorities that are in place in China; He hasn’t put up His hands; He’s not lost control. However, a recent article in Newsweek portrays an interesting perspective on the Chinese attempt to assimilate the Tibetan plateau into China since the 1950s. The government has used its power to control the people of Tibet since its invasion in 1950. Yet they haven’t earned the hearts; they don’t have the love of the Tibetans.
“The money they had spent to buy the loyalty of Tibetans ($45.6 billion since 2001 for roads, trains, and housing complexes) had more or less come to nothing. ‘Even the most massive infusions of funds have never been able to buy the affection of the people,’ says Tibetologist Parvez Dewan, who has just coauthored a book called Tibet: Fifty Years After with Siddharth Srivastava. ‘You can’t get rid of the alienation of a people through development.'”
“Fifty Years After brims with surprise at the affluent, breathtakingly planned city that Lhasa has become-with sparkling six-lane roads and glass-front shops that sell all the top international designer labels. ‘But we could not find any Tibetan who showed his loyalty to the Chinese,’ says Dewan.”
The Chinese have spent $45.6 billion and yet the one thing that matters the most, the heart of the people, they can’t change. It’s an interesting perspective and one that I think I can learn from. Paul says in I Cornithians 9:19, “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”
I’m facing the prospect that my increasing love for God is going to cost me everything. Am I willing to change my cultural identity to share Jesus’ love that He has for all people? Am I willing to continually give and serve, never receiving love in return except from the one who loves me the most. Am I willing to be an actual slave, or at the very least walk in humility with the true confidence of my identity because of Christ living within me. I can’t change people; I can’t convince people of anything. If I teach, people can only receive, people will only change if the Holy Spirit is working within them. I know dangerously well that we often think we can change people with little cost to us. It’s comfortable to think might, military power, or even the right words will cause change. But really, God has created people to be selflessly loved. True love is the one cross-cultural language that crosses through any barrier, any culture; it can melt the hardest of hearts, and tears down the thickest walls. Are we willing to lay down our pride, our rights, our freedoms for the chance to show people a love that their hearts are desperate for?
Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. In India the same river becomes very wide and is called Brahmaputra.
