Scanning the China titles on my own bookshelves and in the ChinaSource reviews archive, my mind is filled with a montage of images that attempt to characterize China and its church.
Whether it is Lilies Amongst Thorns: Chinese Christians Tell their Stories through Blood and Tears, The Church Behind the Bamboo Curtain, or Faith in the Wilderness, a common theme running through these China stories is the contrast between the resilience of the church and the harsh environment in which it struggles to survive. Titles like The Bells Are Not Silent and A Light That Cannot Be Hidden likewise speak to the irrepressible nature of the faith. The Salt and Light series, which chronicles the exemplary lives of Christians in nineteenth-and twentieth-century China, highlights the transformative role of believers in Chinese society, frequently amidst opposition or in times of social turmoil.
The backdrop for these stories—the often-hostile environment of China itself—is painted variously as barren, inhospitable, dangerous, impenetrable, or unyielding. For many outside China, titles like From the Claws of the Dragon evoke fears of biblical proportions, summoning apocalyptic images of a creature that is the very embodiment of evil. (Paradoxically, the same creature in China has long been considered a symbol of strength and prosperity and an icon of China’s cultural heritage.)
By accentuating positive attributes of China’s church and the negative realities that conspire to make life difficult for Chinese Christians, these metaphors capture the tension within which China’s Christians live out their faith. Colorful, vivid, and evocative—these images promote a narrative in which believers stand out in bold relief against an unchanging background of repression. They provide a vocabulary for making sense of why China is the way it is. Yet, taken to an extreme, this same metaphorical lens limits our field of vision.
Metaphors Become Our Reality
In a Christianity Today article that explores the use of metaphors in church discourse, pastor and author Andrew Wilson writes,
As much as we exert control over our words, our words can exert a kind of control over us. This is especially true of common metaphors. We use particular figures of speech to discuss certain subjects, often without thinking. In turn, those figures of speech influence how we think about the subjects themselves—probably more than we realize. They constrain our thinking, for better or worse. They can calm tensions or inflame them; they can foster unity or diminish it.
Wilson’s article is primarily about biblical images that represent the body of Christ. Yet broadly speaking, his observations apply equally as well to the images often used to describe China and the church’s place in it. These word pictures take on a life of their own. They come to represent not only what we think we know about China’s church, but also what we expect, or don’t expect, from China’s Christians. Similarly, negative images of China as hostile, inhospitable, or dangerous cause us to assume the worst and to lower our expectations of what might be possible.
Over the past decades, Christians in China have repeatedly redefined what is possible, calling into question commonly held assumptions about the limitations on China’s church. The quizzical look on the faces of some Western believers when they hear of cross-cultural workers from China taking the gospel far beyond China’s borders betrays their adherence to a narrative illuminated by metaphors that depict a struggling, and victimized church.
Filling Out the Picture
How can we broaden our metaphorical repertoire to allow for a fuller expression of God’s redemptive work in China? As Wilson reminds us:
Scripture gives us plenty of images for thinking about the people of God. Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city on a hill. Peter says we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are a field and a garden; we are branches in a vine, members of a body, sheep in a fold, crops in a harvest, warriors in a spiritual conflict; we are citizens of heaven, children of God, the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
As for images of the Middle Kingdom itself, Chinese Christians have learned to hold in tension, as it were, two dragons. The wrath of an evil dragon that poses a direct threat to the church contrasts with the splendor of a strong and benevolent dragon symbolizing the rich cultural heritage of the Chinese people. Pastor Sean Long writes that “considering the Chinese authority’s ongoing persecution of the church, Chinese Christians can easily and legitimately identify the ‘evil dragon’ with a hostile political power.” Yet he also argues, “Christians should try to understand the sanctity and transcendence symbolized by the Chinese dragon.”
Metaphors have the power to expand our imaginations or limit our thinking. May the lived experience of China’s Christians, both inside and outside China, inspire new images of what is possible in Christ’s kingdom.
