NEW AND OLD CHINA

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22477, 12 January 1943, Page 2

NEW AND OLD CHINA

Strange Contrasts Exist Productive Of Conflict "To-day China is a strange mixture of East and West; some places completely westernised; some places hardly touched," said the Rev. P. Anderson in a sermon at the Temuka Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning. "New and old exist in the same place and at the same time. The changes from old China to the new are due to Western civilisation in the form of commercialism, education and art and to the missions—and all these have brought things both good and bad to China. "It is commonplace to say that China is a land of ancient civilisation,” said Mr Anderson. "Our Western civilisation has only been in contact with it for a comparatively short time and the coastal towns, you might think, would be completely westernised. You can travel to the most inaccessible mountain valleys and discover the übiquitous petrol tin, the cake of soap and the toothbrush, and yet. even wiui the most westernised of the Chinese, you have only to scratch below the surface to realise that lie has not thrown off the traditions of thousands of years. This meeting of the East and West is productive of conflict, ft can be seen in organisations and communities which have decided to westernise themselves, in contrast to those who have decided to maintain the old tradition. It can be seen often in the family, the children absorbing the new ideas wish to follow western ways, as, for example, in sex relations, very frequently without understanding the sanctions that govern western conduct. The old people hold to the old ways and have but too often good cause to think that the old ways are the better. Even in the individual, conflict is to be found. Respect for Personality ‘‘China has a principle,” said Mr Anderson, “which we Westerners can scarcely understand at all, namely a respect for personality. This principle rightly used is good, but we Westerners going to China can see it terribly abused in a blatant hypocrisy. We give at least lip service to the ideal of Truth, a conception still largely foreign to the Chinese. It is not for us to pride ourselves too greatly, for we also abuse this principle of truth in terrible fashion. How often do we use truth as a bludgeon to cudgel a man with? How often have you heard a man say ‘I gave him a few home truths to go on with! I have given him a piece of my mind!’ How often we use the truth to stab a man? How little consideration do we give to personality! How little there is of the love of Jesus in our use of the truth! These two principles can often be seen in conflict in the same individual. I have heard a Chinese pastor, a very real and earnest Christian, tell the most barefaced lies because he feared the truth would bring shame and disrespect to the one spoken to. He would even tell this lie, though he knew it was known for a lie. He has not yet learned how to synthesise these two principles, and it is a task which lies before us also. This conflict leads to inconsistency that is often interpreted as weakness and failure. “The Chinese Church is also filled with all the weaknesses and frailties that we possess. We have carried to China our denominational differences and, puzzling as this was at first to them, they have proved only too fertile a soil for this evil and they have now scores of divisions of their own. There are jealousies between congregations. There are the same troubles inside congregations as we have here — cliques who will not talk to one another, choirs that go on strike, people who leave the choir because they do not get the treatment they think they should have, and one time members who cease to attend because the parson neglected to visit them when they were sick—all the thousands of different excuses people will make. The Chinese Church is as human as we are and as frail. Uneducated Ministry “Not only that! The Chinese Church has to contend with the difficulty of an uneducated ministry. With few exceptions, her pastors left halfway through their High School course to go to the Theological College. The Church in China is mainly composed of the poor. It is not yet the fashionable and conventional thing to be a Christian, and it is a costly business. It means suffering at the hands of heathen neighbours. It means loneliness and isolation. Christ said, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’ and the Chinese Church is witness to the truth of this. "I have painted a black picture of the Church in China,” said Mr Anderson. "A missionary who had been only a few years In China saw all this and came to the conclusion that, without the foreigner and foreign aid, there was no future for the Church in China. Side by side with the article in which he made this statement, there was another article. ‘Christian activities ?n wartime China.’ This article gave the absolute lie to the other man’s pessimism. No Bitterness or Hatred “I want to tell you something the Christians have not done. In all the years I have been in China I have never yet heard any Chinese Christian express one word of bitterness or hatred against the enemy within their gates and they have suffered and suffered terribly. It is a low estimate to say that 100,000,000 Chinese have died as a result of this war. I have never heard a pastor from a Chinese pulpit utter a single word of invective or offer any prayer for the destruction of the enemy. I have heard prayers—heartbroken prayers—for peace—for God’s peace, for the time when Japanese and Chinese may live together once more as brothers. “Some months after the Japanese occupation of Amoy, I went to a little village in the middle of the island where I had once studied the language, to visit some friends. They were no longer in their own house, but they took me down to the old place. As I stood with them amid the ruins of their old home, I passed through one of the deepest spiritual experiences of my life. To gaze upon that ruined home, where I had spent so many happy hours of happy fellowship, and not feel hatred for the enemy that had done this thing. My friends were standing at my side with not one word —not one word of complaint or bitterness. “That,” said Mr Anderson, “is a part of the truly Christian attitude to life from which we can learn much from the Chinese. Even the coolies have it, and it helps them suffer whatever misfortunes life may bring and carry on quite undismayed.”