Fr. Andrew’s Religious Observations of China
Chinese thought is varied & in important ways analogous to modern Christian experience, even Orthodox
thought. Secular scholars assume that the original religion of the 1st Chinese people was paganistic.
However, Christians, & even some Chinese & Western scholars have noticed certain interesting parallels
between the teachings of the Bible’s Prophets & the most ancient Chinese beliefs & practices. This
evidence shows the original religion of China was a belief in one god, with fascinating prayers about this
god being a trinity of some kind. Adding to this, a team of Protestant missionaries, including at least one
Chinese Christian scholar, has written a series of books detailing how the Chinese writing system reveals
the same or similar ideas as those presented in our Bible regarding the Creator, Adam & Eve, Paradise, the
first sin, the Devil, the Flood & the Tower of Babel. Even prominent prophecies of Christ which are in the
Old Testament are presented in the word-pictures of Chinese writing.
By the 4th century B.C., this original religion of China’s one god had disappeared, except in ancient rituals
& legends. Confucius & other scholars were aware of this lost religion & they tried to reconstruct what the
original beliefs were. Though some of the Chinese believed in paganistic ideas by this time, Chinese
thought developed more in line with Secularism & Philosophy. For instance, Confucius, like other great
Chinese minds of the time, including some ancient Jewish Sadducees, didn’t believe in life after death since
there was no tangible proof of it. This view dominated China until Western Socialism destroyed it with Karl
Marx’s ideas of determining good & evil according to man’s relationship with money, not with man’s
approaches to morality.
By the time Christ was born, Confucius’s teachings dominated Chinese beliefs; but soon after this, Taoism
& Buddhism converted most of the Chinese within a few centuries. Buddhism & Taoism preach pantheism &
reincarnation. Instead of thinking that human nature is a reality & instead of thinking that God became man,
they believe that man & animals & trees & dirt & all things have always been God, so that any idea that
differs from this is presumed to be an illusion. But like the original religion of China, the original beliefs of
Buddhism & Taoism have been compromised by leftover ideas & practices of the old Paganism. But since
the 1980’s, Chinese thought has shifted from a traditional form of Buddhism-Taoism to the modern version
of Secular-Humanism, which treats ancient religion as inferior.
More Chinese people are becoming Christian. But their Christianity is regulated by the State. Peking
chooses China’s Roman Catholic bishops, which the Vatican struggles to bypass. But Protestantism is most
regulated. Peking outlawed all Protestant denominations & combined all of the doctrines uniting them, thus
making a brand-new theology, a generic Protestantism! Eastern Orthodoxy is allowed, but only if priests &
bishops are born & raised in China.
Since the 1980’s, fewer Chinese people go to temples. Some just pray at home for a few minutes in front
of a statue of Buddha with a stick of incense. But many people ignore religion, except at certain times.
Fireworks in China’s old religion represent birth, joy & good luck (not grace), so they shoot fireworks on New
Year’s Day and weddings. Five days after New Year’s there’s another celebration, where more fireworks
are for financial luck. Then 10 days later, they have their lantern celebration to honor the dead & pray for
future life, symbolized by a rabbit.
Religious people in China today are heavily influenced by an ancient spirituality of happiness, normally
through financial success. It’s great to have conversations where there is no hatred and bigotry against rich
people. But it’s not so great to see this mentality in Buddhist and Taoist temples. Their priests and monks
do palm reading and spend hours at their temples selling their craft. They stand in an area of the temple,
waiting for customers. People go to these monks and get their palms read, maybe with some spiritual
advice. Then the people pay the monk for his service, who in turn will later do a number of prayers for them
according to how much he was paid. It is also normal to see vendors & kiosks of people selling religious
artifacts and tourist things along the walls of the temples. Jesus Christ dealt with such a practice at the
Jerusalem Temple by whipping the merchants and destroying their earnings. He was teaching us to lay
aside all earthly cares and pray with all our hearts, souls, minds and bodies.