A Strange Burden

I was watching a DVD sermon from the fellowship that brought me to faith. It was called, "how does your God stack up?" and it consisted of comparing four "spiritual leaders" in the areas of teaching, (how influential they were) Morality, (how consistent their lives were with their teaching) prophesy, miracles and some other criteria. Four big blocks were place on the stage with their names: Confucius, Buddha, (though it was spelled Buddah) Mohamed and Jesus.

The premise was that whatever belief you choose to follow, your leader should have certain characteristics. More blocks were stacked on top of the names depending on how well each did. Some had bigger teaching blocks. Jesus had more. Mohamed's morality block was really thin. Only Jesus got prophesy, miracles or resurrection. It was true. It was fair.

But after being in China for so long and being so thoroughly cross-culturally trained, something felt wrong about it. I understood the illustration's point, and it was wonderfully executed for its target audience. That fellowship is made of suburban people, mostly, and the talk was addressing a specific ideology: Middle class American Agnostic thinking, something like, "Well, Jesus is just like the other great teachers, Confucius, Buddha and Mohamed. He's not any more right. People can all follow whatever they want, so I'll follow whatever I want and what works for me."

In addressing that Ideology, the sermon showed that those great teachers are not all equal, and we have to choose rather than floating in relativism. I was a great talk back when I was a suburban American.

But I couldn't help thinking that as a Chinese-Marinated College Educated Cross-cultural servant, I was uncomfortable. I imaged what would happen if a Chinese person saw that presentation. They would be offended, shamed, and shut down emotionally. Or I imagined someone who's read what I've read thinking, "Well, Buddha wasn't exactly a religious leader. And Confucius was just secular in his teaching, refusing to even address the divine issues."
Certainly some people can't be reached by those talks. Thank God some people can, I only hope they can keep learning and understanding so they don't do anything ignorant with their faith.

I also identified a striking moment of being an overseas veteran in the American Church. I expected to be irritated by my stateside brothers and sisters, but here was a moment I didn't expect.