God's Double Agent (45 page)

Stories like Chen’s make me so thankful I started ChinaAid in my hot Philadelphia attic. I’ve always felt the organization was a natural progression of the work of my mentor Dr. Jonathan Chao, who encouraged me to be a “missionary scholar” while we were in China. I listened so intently to his plans for the church in China that I was able to write pages and pages about it for my prison interrogators so many years ago. Even though they weren’t impressed by the “three huas,” Jonathan’s vision has impacted my ministry ever since and I think he would’ve been proud to see Chen’s saga unfold on primetime television.

Sadly, Jonathan died of lymphoma in 2004 after a lifetime of Bible smuggling and other covert “religious infiltration.” This year, as I was writing this book, I too went to the doctor and received some bad news.

“We found a tumor,” the doctor told me, and Heidi squeezed my hand.

Yet God is good.

Sometimes, people ask me how I’ve lived without being immobilized by fear, especially considering some of my more harrowing experiences. The question, however, is easily answered by a story I heard from a friend in the Chinese countryside—the
Anhui Province—back when I was a “double agent,” teaching future Communist leaders during the day and training pastors of illegal countryside churches during the nights and weekends.

This man was sent to a labor camp for running a house church. On the first day of his imprisonment, the guards lined up all the new prisoners to shave their heads. His young daughter was watching him through the iron gate, crying.

“Oh, Daddy, you didn’t commit a crime!” she protested. “Even if you’re released, people will see your shaved head and think you’re a criminal.”

“Remember what the Bible says?” he said in the gentlest voice possible. “Every piece of hair is counted. Without His permission, not a single piece can fall to the ground.”

When he got back into line, resigned to his fate, his daughter pressed her face against the cold bars. But when it was the man’s turn to get his head shaved, the clippers malfunctioned. The guard angrily examined the device, found it to be functioning, and tried again.

“There’s a problem,” he told the other guard, because—once again—when he placed the clippers on his head, they didn’t work. The second guard angrily walked over to my friend, placed his clippers on his head, and flipped the switch. Nothing.

The guards scrambled, now that both sets of clippers didn’t appear to be working with a long line of prisoners yet to shave. Finally, they sent him away, grumbling about how there must be something wrong with the man’s hair. As he walked away, the clippers began working again. The father caught his daughter’s eye and smiled. Not a single piece of his hair had fallen to the ground.

As a forty-four-year-old man, I still feel very much like the prisoner’s daughter must’ve felt on that day: delighted and thankful our lives are totally in God’s hands. Without His permission no one can reduce one second of our life, nor can we add a single hour to our lives by worrying.

It frees us to work tirelessly and courageously for the cause of Christ, without fearing what will become of us. In fact, Chen’s saga could easily be the climax of my story, the capstone of a career of fighting for justice. And, indeed, if God had prepared me from childhood to advocate for this one man, it would’ve been enough.

However, I know one day soon my phone will ring again. On the other end will be a person needing help, a child of the Lord being mistreated by the powerful and the corrupt.

After Chen’s high-profile victory, it’s tempting to slow down, to spend more time with my family and on myself.

But I’m still here, I’m still fighting, and—by the grace of God—I’m still going to answer the call.

__________________

[
¹
]“Batman Star Christian Bale Attacked Stopped in China from meeting a Blind Activist Lawyer,” YouTube video, 2:46, posted by TibetArchive on Dec. 15, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-NGweWIQqc.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

2 CORINTHIANS 1:8–11 ESV

Epilogue

A Letter to American Readers

Dear American readers;

“China is a sleeping giant,” Napoleon said. “When she awakes, she will shake the world.” And we have seen this prescient nineteenth-century observation come true. After occupation, division, isolation, famine, and plenty, the nation has definitely awakened. Sometimes Americans are confused about how exactly to perceive modern China. Is it a military threat? How do we deal with their currency manipulation? Is it immoral to purchase products made in China? While the politicians debate these issues, people of all political parties and religious beliefs should emphatically agree on this: China’s human rights violations should not be tolerated, overlooked, or swept under the rug.

I created ChinaAid in the attic of my Philadelphia home many years ago. Our organization is still going strong, and I’d love for you to join us in our efforts to promote freedom and the rule of law in China. All Americans should be able to rally around freedom. Chen Guangcheng is the perfect example of this great country supporting and celebrating someone who had enough courage to stand up to his oppressors. Though he is not
a Christian, Guangcheng knew that forced abortion policies are hurtful to women, morally corrosive to society, and deadly to the most innocent of victims. Americans have embraced him since he arrived in New York, and he has been honored on many occasions.

Recently, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, Chen said, “I’m often asked what the international community can do to help promote democracy and rule of law in China. I sincerely hope that people around the world will lose their fear of offending China because it’s rich and powerful. I want people to stop turning a blind eye to the abuses that people throughout China are suffering. . . . Don’t do anything on the basis that China’s rulers will be pleased or not pleased.”

ChinaAid provides training, financial support, and legal defense for people like Chen. In fact, in the past ten years we have supported over a thousand persecuted prisoners of faith and freedom. Our associated attorneys travel thousands of miles across China, file legal challenges, provide criminal defense, and even file applications to stage public protests. They do this at huge security and political risk to themselves.

Are we always successful? No. In fact, we lose most of these cases. Since China is still ruled by the Communist Party, judicial independence simply does not exist. However, if you ask those who were defended, they will tell you our success rate is 100 percent.

Let me give you one example. On July 29, 2012, Pastor Jin Yongsheng, a house church leader in Inner Mongolia (a region in northern China), and twenty-four other believers, including his wife and two daughters, were providing health education to the public when local authorities intervened. Pastor Jin was viciously manhandled, beaten, and injured, then fined and sentenced to fifteen days administrative detention. The authorities claimed that pastor Jin “was engaged in proselytizing in the name of rendering medical service by measuring people’s blood pressure.” The authorities also raided his church and confiscated many items of church property, including Sunday
offerings. ChinaAid sent an attorney to request administrative review in accordance with Chinese law. The government denied the request. We lost the first round.

But ChinaAid continued to support Jin. The attorney filed an administrative lawsuit against the local Public Security Bureau officials for violating the law and failing to protect citizens’ religious freedom. In November, Jin informed us they had encountered significantly less persecution after the media exposure resulting from ChinaAid’s reports and the attorney’s legal defense work. Moreover, provincial and municipal PSB officers made a trip to his home and apologized for violating the rights of Pastor Jin and his house church. They even returned about $2,000 USD that was confiscated in the raid!

In a bold step toward building goodwill and trust with the PSB and local government, Pastor Jin decided to withdraw the pending administrative lawsuit against the PSB. Pastor Jin and his church have been greatly encouraged by this battle and now have much more freedom to worship both in their village and in the surrounding area. More importantly, the persecutors now understand that Pastor Jin is not alone, that harassing him means people all over the world will fight back.

This story effectively demonstrates, I think, why the conventional way of measuring success might not apply in China. It is also an example of the kind of action atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Falun Gong, and Christians should all support. Religious freedom, it can be argued, is our first freedom, and it lays the foundation for all other basic human rights.

If you are a fellow brother or sister in Christ, however, you realize ultimately the Chinese people need our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I want to make some observations that may be helpful as we go about the work of spreading the gospel in China.

First, it’s important to slow down. Americans like to see things
get done instantly—instant food, Twitter, and “shock and awe” military campaigns. I once saw an ad in a major Christian magazine with the slogan “one dollar, one soul.” Apparently it cost one dollar to purchase a Bible in China, which could convert one Chinese soul—or so the equation of instant gratification went. Some Americans go to China for a “short-term mission” and leave behind a kind of Americanized Chinese Christianity—with believers who can only pray in English. Unfortunately, the fast-food approach will not work when talking about life-and-death decisions of salvation. It’s even counterproductive. The “Four Spiritual Laws” (a very helpful tool used by Campus Crusade for Christ) is not a magic marketing book or business model to harvest souls. Instead of looking for a quick fix, I encourage you to learn about the Chinese people and their culture. China’s history is almost twenty times longer than America’s, so it may take some time, but it’s worth it. It took my American teachers years before their living and interacting with Chinese students bore spiritual fruit.

Second, genuineness is a valuable social currency with the Chinese. Chinese culture, especially after sixty years of communism and wave after wave of class struggle, is desperate for trust. Many of my classmates were more willing to share their personal secrets with American teachers than with fellow Chinese students because they were so caring and seemed to be trustworthy. I will never forget being invited to the foreign expert regiment building where our American teachers lived. We students talked, laughed, and joked like little children.

On one of those weekends, I walked into the apartment of a teacher who’d been in China for at least three years. He was playing his guitar and singing, and he suddenly began crying. He told me he was missing his home and parents in California. I was so touched by his confession and emotion. Chinese professors would never weep in front of their students. Because of our American teachers’ honesty and openness, we felt total
freedom—including the liberty to grab anything we wanted from their refrigerators. That’s love!

Third, let’s resist the urge to promote a certain brand of theology. I once met with a famous American evangelist in a five-star hotel in Beijing. “How many Chinese Christians,” he asked, “have the spiritual gift of speaking in other tongues?” While I am not personally against that doctrine and practice (and have even had this experience), I could tell that this secondary issue was his main concern, and that made me uneasy. A few years later this minister wrote a book about how to speak in tongues that was distributed by the tens of thousands through underground Chinese printing networks. Now this issue has become one of the most divisive issues in Chinese churches.

When I enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1997, I was handed a form asking me to declare my Protestant denomination. My eyes glazed over as I looked over the list—there were two hundred options! Fortunately the list included “Independent,” which I checked. That was one of my first experiences of culture shock.

Instead of getting bogged down by these little things, choose to live out the true gospel of grace and truth. Show care and concern for others, and present the truth of Jesus in the context of love. Sometimes this can be done with a small handwritten card, a home-cooked meal, or just a visit. My in-laws were very touched when two American teachers showed up at their doorstep in a remote village. These Americans were traveling by bicycle on the dusty roads. They prayed for my wife’s family members and other villagers. They might have been the first “big nose” visitors that village had ever seen. After they left, both of my in-laws came to Christ.