Chinese Religion, and the Excluded Middle

1. Intro - How we explain the World

Hello, tonight I'm writing about a topic that has been the source of much misunderstanding and miscommunication between Westerners (especially missionaries or those whose work involves them with Eastern religion one way or another). It's called the "Excluded Middle." (For those interested in more reading on this topic, here's a link to an essay by the late missiologist/anthropologist Paul Hiebert, to whom credit for the concept of the excluded middle is typically attributed.)

In the West, we have a more or less binary view of the universe/all-that-is:

Blue: Unseen/Supernatural world, dealt with solely in a religious context.
Green: Seen/Natural world, dealt with by science, etc. (Light Green: Mysterious, but not religious)

Notes:

1. I'm talking about 2015
It was not always so in the West; pre-christian/pagan Europe would have looked a lot more like the Chinese Religion chart we're covering later. Up until modern science, the light green area would have included things like alchemy.

2. This is the West as a Whole
I've drawn the blue section that small to demonstrate how for much of the modern-day West, religion is considered extraneous to normal everyday life. Those of us who grew up in the Bible belt sometimes don't realize how secular most of the West is. By the same token, yes there are a few westerners running around who espouse hinduism or some other non-western-origin worldview. But they'd probably be the first to tell you what a non-typical-westerner they are, so we don't need to consider that kind of outlier here.

3. This is Showing how We Explain Reality
As believers we know God is not separate from His creation, nor is He uninvolved in our day to day lives. However, this chart is referring to how we explain the world around us, not our teleology. (The "how," not the "why.") When you encounter repeated car trouble, you may pray about it and wonder what God is teaching you through it, and you may try going to a different auto mechanic, but you do not blame it on your deceased Uncle Joe who's angry you didn't put flowers on his grave this year, or a rival at work secretly stealing some of your hair and attacking you with voodoo.

4. Most People Do Leave Room for the Mysterious
I've included a little band for the "unexplained," those mysterious phenomenon which lots of people find fun to think about and talk about. Go out far enough into the American countryside to encounter folk culture, and this gap widens considerably. I did this to show that really in the West we have our own category here, the big difference is that we draw a firm line (represented by the thicker black line) between that kind of thing and anything religious. If, in certain churches, as I mentioned in a previous post, you start getting blurry lines there (believing in God but also carrying "lucky" tokens, putting a cross over your door not just as a sign of faith but also to keep "evil" out, etc.) then you are descending from orthodox doctrines into the slippery slope of folk theology, which typically leads towards an increasingly fear-based way of thinking with less and less resemblance to orthodox, scripturally-based faith.

So that's the West, in general. But in strict Modernism, and today for both atheists and the "science replaces god" people, you have the most simplistic possible view of the universe:

I could reduce it even further by simply writing "Synapses firing to no purpose."

Looking at this chart, perhaps it becomes apparent why it's so difficult to have conversations about the existence of God with those who hold to this way of thinking. To them, there is only the dark green part steadily filling up the light green part, no need for any blue at all. They must have life experiences or realizations of some kind that totally shatter this too-narrow illusion of reality to open up to the idea of a supernatural world, otherwise they simply ascribe anything "weird" to that buffer category as one more thing science will eventually explain. (This is what I call the "Science of the gaps" theory)

2. Chinese Religion - A Different View of the World

So that's "The West." When approaching "The East," a lot of Western people expect some mystery, some things that operate according to different rules than they're used to. Asia is that place where odd, inexplicable things can happen. However, and this is important, for westerners all those inexplicable things typically go into the "Mystery" category that is not religious and not really supernatural. Though it's not politically correct now, you've perhaps heard or read about various tribal/traditional religions described in older literature as "superstition," "mumbo-jumbo," and similar deprecating terms. The implication is that they aren't based in any kind of reality, that between the scientifically explainable world (creation, for believers) and God in heaven there is no "middle world" that civilized, educated humans need take into account.

Outside of many churches we might describe as charismatic, even Bible-believing Christians are usually very hesitant (in the West) to ascribe anything they observe to those kinds of spiritual forces the Bible clearly teaches exist, let alone those on which it does not comment.

Contrast this with how a typical Taiwanese person might view the world:

So here you can see, the world for a Taiwanese believer in traditional religion is a much more complicated place. The majority of Taiwanese would look at the world in this way to a certain extent, even if they do so by rejecting parts of it. ("I don't really believe ancestral spirits come into our world and bother people" is a statement only someone raised in and recognizing this worldview can make; a Christian Westerner does not believe that either, but they wouldn't ever say it because the question itself does not exist for them.)

Note the "Gates." In a folk/traditional religious world view, there are portals of various kinds between this world and the unseen/spirit world. Some of these may simply be natural objects of significance- a notable boulder, an impressive tree- that are "linked" to the unseen world (thinking of them as having spirit-wifi access might be a good analogy), as certain kinds of animals are considered to be as well (especially the "tricky" ones, like foxes). In Chinese traditional religion, however, there are "higher" portals or gates between this world and the spirit world that are open at various times or in various ways. One very notable example is during Ghost Month, when the gates of hell are said to open to let spirits of various kinds come into our world and potentially trouble the living in various harmful ways. (There is a long list of activities deemed "risky" during this time due to possible attack or negative influence from the spirits)

In the West, we might think of something like an Ouija board as a similar kind of "portal," and often Christians who lack a robust understanding of "spiritual warfare" -really just the wider reality the Bible clearly teaches that we live in- will instinctively revert to a very folk religious way of thinking when confronted with the occult. That might be the easiest way to visualize Taiwanese traditional religion for a Westerner, however- imagine if you lived in fear of the occult every day, and your culture lacked a "highest God" who could hear your prayers and who cared about you. Your only option would be to invoke what powers you knew of to protect yourself. Throw in the very strong mandate regarding ancestor worship, and that's basically how religion works in Taiwan.

Notes for the Chart:

1. This is a general attempt at contrast, not a highly accurate parsing of Chinese belief
It would require a hugely complicated chart to even begin to explain a vanilla version of the world according to Chinese folk religion, and to some extent it would be impossible because many people embrace multiple conflicting belief systems, feeling logic is inadequate to deal with the divine and it's better to be safe than sorry if one turns out to be true. This is a rough sketch, and if you want to find fault with it, it would be easy to do so. (If you feel I've really made a basic error, please leave me a comment and explain how so.)

2. "Grey Areas"
Another Western thing to do is place things in clearly divided categories. Things like Qi/Chinese medicine (somewhat related topics) and even business profit are not purely natural, scientifically explicable phenomenon, but are connected to the invisible/intangible and spirit worlds. More on this later...

3. I'm not clear on the Chinese pantheon, but few are, even adherents
What I have observed is that few people try to grasp the recognized hierarchy of gods and approach them accordingly. People in different walks of life and from different families and ethnic backgrounds worship different collections of big and small gods. There are gods associated with certain places/areas (The city of Taipei has a patron god, for example, every patch of rice fields has a little earth god shrine, and some say every house has a little spirit), gods associated with certain trades (the sea goddess Matsu, very important in Taiwan, is connected to anything that has to do with the ocean, like fishing, and much more besides), and gods associated with certain roles. (Guanyu is a warrior god of justice and protection, worshiped variously by those who wish for protection for their business, and by both police and triads/gangs)

4. Chinese "Heaven" is hard to explain
In Chinese thought, the idea of 天 (Tian, "heaven," but that's a misleading translation, it's not a place people go after death) is more like the divine order which maintains the universe, decides justice, decrees fate, and is over all things. Apparently Tian varied and still varies between being thought of more like a highest God (getting close to a transcendent monotheistic God, which some claim it originally represented), and more like an impersonal divine force, depending on the time period and the variety of Chinese religious thought/philosophy. "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world," might be getting a little bit closer to the idea for Westerners, if you imagine that the terms God and Heaven were identified closely enough to be interchangeable. But this all gets confusing because at the same time there's the diverse pantheon of gods, as mentioned above.
How those gods and Tian divide up responsibility for governing the affairs of men (not even to mention various Chinese flavors of Buddhism with Buddha/manifold Buddhas being present as well, alongside Chinese traditional religion) is far beyond the scope of this post, but I think I'm not entirely wrong in say it's rather like a Roman Catholic idea of the Saints and Archangels and Mary doing a lot of the helping, protecting, and blessing for individual people, while God can of course also be prayed to directly, but is farther away and less accessible, ruling and sustaining all, and taking care of managing the big picture. (I hope I have not falsely represented Roman Catholicism by that description, but that's quite orthodox compared to what I observed in Mexico...)

 3. The Excluded Middle

Now think of the conflict in worldviews we have. On the one hand, you have science handling the task of explaining anything we can reliably observe and a transcendent Christian God who cares about and engages in the affairs of men, and on the other hand you have a whole "middle world" of spirits and the spirit world which plays an intimate role in the affairs of men, with a Creator or Highest God far off and not practically involved. The Western worldview, based partially on the revelation of scripture itself but also on other secular factors, simply discards the "hidden" reality of this world and also any "lower" divine realm altogether. Most of the rest of the world does not. Sharing the gospel effectively in a traditional/folk religious culture may require understanding this fact.

Given this view of reality, by way of analogy, a "vanilla" western approach to sharing the gospel to a traditional religious adherent might sound similar to one janitor at an overseas Microsoft office telling another janitor to call Bill Gates and ask for a promotion (in a culture that doesn't reward such audacity). You are telling someone who believes in a whole tiered hierarchical system in which even dead relatives must be appeased and in which the gods, if they be willing, provide assistance purely on a transactional basis (worship and sacrifice, in exchange for blessings or protection), that the God higher than the entire hierarchy wants to have a personal relationship with him. If the Holy Spirit has not already been preparing their heart, it may take some time for them to wrap their head around that notion. They will be more interested in knowing whether your God is more generous or powerful than their current gods, what kind of benefits He's offering in exchange for their loyalty. (Thus, sadly, the prosperity gospel is rampant and popular in Taiwan. In one sense, it's simply monotheistic idolatry)

Western missionaries are often put into a difficult position, therefore, of being asked to explain how Christianity as a belief system handles situations which we have never previously acknowledged as existing in the world. And sometimes it can be unnerving. Exorcisms are already shaky ground for most of us, but at least any Biblically-literate Christian knows they were happening in the New Testament, though their life in the West is not likely to have provided them with experience in that sort of thing. But what happens when entirely alien scenarios unfold? "How will your God protect me from ancestral spirits bringing bad fortune to my business if I don't set out the spirit offering tables?" is probably not a question for which most American pastors have a quick answer. The knowledge does not fall into one's head the moment one lands in one's ministry field, I can tell you that much for sure.

Thus, the default quick answer, very often, is "I have good news: there are no: [ancestral spirits, gods, evil spirits, curses, etc...] who can harm you, because they don't exist." (Or worse, "because the Bible says they don't exist.")

"Ok, now let's figure out a culturally relevant way to share the gospel."

Even if it's true that no spirits of the dead are roaming around the town waiting to inflict misfortune on those whose rice offering is too scanty, this reply does little for the inquirer. That's because he wasn't asking you about his world, he was asking you about your God. If the question is whether God can and will protect him when he needs protection, the answer is yes, God can and will do that according to His will, and no spirit- evil, ancestral, or any other possible kind of spirit- is outside the will of God. Teach him to read the Bible for himself and he can decide whether his cultural opinions regarding the afterlife are reconcilable with Scripture. And it's likely he'll do a much better job of explaining the gospel inside his culture, having accepted it inside his culture, than you would. Taiwan is full of Christians who never understood the gospel until they lived in the West. There the gospel made sense, but returning to Taiwan, they find it difficult to share with people not similarly familiar with western ways of thinking. There are many reasons for that, not only the one we're talking about here. But it seems something must be done to share the gospel inside Taiwan's traditional culture that seemingly has not yet been done.

4. Then, What?

Must we avoid syncretism? Yes we certainly must. I am not advocating in any shape, form, or fashion blending Biblical truth with traditional beliefs or confusing the two. But we can recognize that everyone comes to Christ from where they are, not from where we are. A step towards Christ from within Chinese traditional religion, or any local religion or different world religion, will not necessarily look like a step towards Christ from within your own background.

As I shared in a previous entry, everyone comes to Christ within their own cultural context. So if we want to take the gospel across cultural divides, we have to go to them not only geographically, but step inside their context and point the most direct path to the Kingdom we can, not one that snakes back away through our own cultural context beforehand.

This is just the basic idea, there are vast arrays of subcultures from which people believe on Christ

If we need for a local person to be educated regarding our Western worldview so that we know how to share Christ with them, we'll never really take Christ into that culture, only take people out of it. We have to continuously point them to Christ from wherever they currently are, even if that means their walk towards Christ looks much different from what we saw in our home culture

That's much more challenging than just translating our favorite gospel presentation into their language. But we have the Holy Spirit, and we have discernment, we have Christ Himself and His life in us, we have special revelation in Scripture which can keep us in the right path if we keep it in heart and in mind, and we have a calling from God to reach every culture with the gospel. That's sanction enough to figure out a few things along the way.

I increasingly feel our job is not to educate, but to introduce.