Disappointment, Loneliness, Love
Another post for fellow Christians when I was in China, compiled from previous bits and pieces of thought, written as of February 2024. Maybe this was where I started practicing love again.
Why can’t we call our God “Yawei”? (雅ya威wei, which means elegance and stateliness in Chinese) This might seem like a small matter to you, but it is such basic question that is worth examining.
If you already have faith that the Bible is God’s word and is without error, then don’t use your limited imagination to polish anything. This is a distortion of God’s word and an encroachment on God’s authority. The common Chinese Union Version of the Bible is the result of the efforts of many missionaries, they must have tried hard to avoid the bad habit inherently in classical Chinese of pursuing an “elegant and expressive” form. So it doesn’t embellish or distort much. We should be grateful and don’t let the good intentions of our predecessors go to waste.
The Bible challenges human understanding greatly, and we will notice many things contrary to convention: Why did Abraham sacrifice his only son against familial ethic? Why did God consider Job a righteous man yet subjected him to profound suffering? Why did Jesus, prophesied as the Prince of Peace, say, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”? Why didn’t the king of Israel establish a kingdom for his people but instead went to the cross? All these questions point to the initial statement: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
Only God possesses the ability to discern good and evil; humans, with knowledge but without the ability, cannot truly distinguish between good and evil. Or, in other words, there is a significant gap between what humans consider good and the ultimate good of God. To rescue us from this death trap, Jesus came to bestow grace upon us—repentance and forgiveness. We are not perfect; we have free will but cannot help making mistakes as our ancestors. However, we can correct ourselves, repent, trust in Him, and strive to imitate His goodness. And “雅Yah” and “威weh” are just shallow habits of human thought assuming what is good. Using them as representations of God and interpreting them literally is just a typical mistake.
God explicitly and repeatedly emphasizes in the Bible, “I am the Lord your God.” The focus of this statement is not “your God” but “the Lord.” The missionaries translating the Bible did not choose to be clever, using “雅威” like some scholars did. They adhered to the translation principle of avoiding any descriptive Chinese characters that could distort the original text. This is not because they lack aesthetic taste; this name is crucial. “Yahweh” is Hebrew; Jews call the Lord Yahweh. Its original meaning is “I am who I am,” self-existent. Jesus claimed, “Before Abraham, I am.” “I and the Father are one.” The name Yahweh itself is a testimony by Jesus that He is God, the cornerstone of the Christian faith. We must know who we truly believe in; we are not followers of “elegance and stateliness” but of Christ.
For a long time, I was conflicted. I felt that my expectations for Christians were very, very low, just hoping that those who call me brother and sister understand what they believe in. I often doubted if I had faith; I never experienced the trials of Job, never walked through the valley of the shadow of death. But I also know that I seem to have failed every small temptation. This means I haven’t been reborn, haven’t truly gained transcendental cognition. I can’t truly love others as myself, can’t participate in public life while maintaining solitary contemplation, and even often forget that He is with me. So, at most, I am just a small believer, and I can’t demand more from others. But if a Christian living a pagan culture stops thinking and correcting, that person is akin to being dead.
Christ doesn’t save us from suffering and distress or teach us to do good and accumulate virtue. He is not your servant helping you achieve your wishes. Suffering is an inevitable issue of human finitude. It challenges people to base themselves on understanding God and then engage in profound self-reflection to fight the good fight. Christ didn’t come to solve suffering but death; death is the ultimate predicament for humans. Therefore, the redemption of Christ is a genuine salvation. It is the suffering of Christ on the cross that gives you the opportunity to enter heaven, not your own good deeds in return. No matter how much good a person does, it cannot compare to the sacrifice of Christ. Even if you imagine “peace and joy” with your limited cognitive ability, it cannot compare to heaven.
You can only tear yourself apart, understand the sincere efforts of Christ, be redeemed first, then become humble and reverent, and then strive to be a genuinely good person according to His teachings. If you understand what redemption is, why would you merely be afraid of going to hell? Why would you think, “It’s better not to know this faith and suffer this fear”? I’m only afraid that someday I fail His sacrifice, again. Every time I read about Peter’s weeping I shudder. He loves me far more than I love myself; I don’t even think I deserve heaven, yet He gives me the chance and has been waiting for so many years. I am afraid to experience the loss of faith again, because there is no love outside the cross, only a shadow of love at most. And an antiChrist society, an antichrist family, will not have even a vestigial trace of love. It is hell.
Understanding that Christ, not humans themselves, saves us, leads to fundamental differences from other faiths. The self-cultivation of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, the determination of people’s destiny advocated by the CPC, cannot coexist with our faith. Let’s not be spiritually divided. If a Christian has never thought about death, then the most basic order hasn’t been established. How difficult it is for us Chinese to be Christians! There is too much censorship and brainwashing in daily life, and our traditional culture has been avoiding talking about death for thousands of years. But we must practice our imagination, thinking about death, about the life after death. Otherwise, we will never overcome our pragmatism in bones, the Bible will always be merely a mysterious chicken soup for the soul.
If God has a plan for everyone, then my disappointment and loneliness have nothing to do with yours. This is just part of His arrangement for me.
Deep down, I have this most primitive Christian image, full of questions and challenges. They are the most active thinkers, among whom were born the greatest thinkers in human history, such as Augustine, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, John Locke, Adam Smith, and many more. A nameless monk like William of Ockham could leave behind systematic insights. They were brave warriors who conquered the Roman Empire, defeated the aggressive Islamic Jihad and invasion many times, conquered Viking, pagan tribes, and the Ottoman Empire, defeated the Arab invasion, the Persian Zoroastrianism… I was deeply moved by them; this childish image had been my initial understanding and longing since I was little.
I grew up in an environment devoid of Christianity, surrounded by Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and the Communists, but I established such original concepts and imaginations through reading and research online. To avoid trouble from adults, I developed the bad habit of lying at a very young age. When I, with such original ideas, encountered other Christians and fellowship in college, I was disappointed. I didn’t feel like I needed love, nor did I feel their love for me, but I often feel their desire to suppress and subject me, in the name of love. Finally I stopped taking faith seriously. Then I began a long journey of self-righteousness, once just like the young intellectuals this country has always expected. It wasn’t until I picked up the Christian faith again that I still approached other Christians with excessive demands rather than love.
Days ago, my mother came and I had a breakthrough. For the first time in my life, I didn’t avoid reading the Bible in front of her, didn’t avoid wearing a cross in front of her, and even told her the story of Moses, explained when visiting Ruins of St. Paul, intentionally sharing the gospel with her, although she still resisted and couldn’t help but want to control me. I am used to logical consistency in thought, but for many years, it seems like I have felt inner coherence for the first time. Perhaps because the audience of my actions was only God whom I had promised honesty, no longer my mother, no longer any “person,” I finally stopped being two-faced, and I now have a little hope to love others according to His teachings.
If you’ve read this article, gone through all the lengthy analysis, I hope you understand that I’m not venting or demanding, but writing with love for you my fellow Christians.