The Search for God in Chinese Culture and Contemporary China1/La Recherche de Dieu Dans La Culture Chinoise Et La Chine Contemporaine

Summary

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The current era is both exciting and confusing. A lot of changes are going on in China. There are both crises and opportunities. In this essay, I want to introduce many exciting recent developments of contemporary Christianity in China. All the developments show that the Chinese church is already taking deeper and deeper roots in China, and there are a lot of opportunities for the church to participate in culture and society. Many Chinese, both common people and intellectuals, have a renewed appreciation of the strength and relevance of the Christian faith, and many others are crying out for something that can satisfy their spiritual longing. Yes, indeed many people are searching for God, or perhaps it is God Himself who has been actively searching for the Chinese since very early times.

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The Search for God in Chinese Culture and Contemporary China1/La Recherche de Dieu Dans La Culture Chinoise Et La Chine Contemporaine

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Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

Acts 17:22-31 (NIV)

THE CHINESE FEVER AND THE CHRISTIANITY FEVER

In 1972, an American Forrest Gump received the invitation of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai to represent USA to play ping-pong in China. After he returned to USA, he said to the reporters, "They are all very poor, and they don't go to the church." Although it was a fictitious story, what was said above was in fact quite true. Around thirty years later (2003), the resident reporter of Time in Beijing (Peking), David Aikman, published a book, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power, which has shocked both the government and the common people. He pointed to the dramatic increase of the number of Christians in China, and then boldly predicted, "After thirty years, it is possible that one-third of the Chinese population will have become Christians. China will then become one of the biggest Christian countries. The...

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