Don Follis 6/1/2001 religion column:
"Chinese intellectual seeks answers as he watches his wife suffer"
My Chinese friend is a professor
of history at Nanjing University.
Guoqiang Dong was in Champaign-Urbana as a visiting scholar at the
University of Illinois during the 1998-99 school year.
Dong interacted extensively
with Christians during his year in the United
States and wrote his observations for a famous social science journal
in
China. This week I read a translation of Dong's perceptions.
I am
mentioned in the article as one of Dong's friends.
Dong refers to himself as
a true and thorough Atheist who could not avoid
conflicts with Christians while in America. The conflicts were
intellectual. Dong and I met every week and became fast friends.
He
insisted that we read the Bible.
Regularly, he asserted that
the miracles in the Bible couldn't be proved.
He thought Jesus was a good teacher, but said it was entirely possible
that
Jesus was deluded. Dong would close his English and Chinese Bibles
after
our discussions and say, "In any case, I don't have faith to believe
that
Jesus could be raised from the dead."
Dong understood there was
no Christianity without faith, but said he
himself could not believe. His struggles with Christianity are
echoed in a
gripping new book by Su Xiaokang called "A Memoir of Misfortune" (Knopf,
2001). Su Xiaokang is a journalist and political dissident living
in the
United States. Su was once on China's most wanted list before
escaping to
Europe and finally setting in Princeton, New Jersey in 1990.
Su was writing, lecturing
and living happily with his wife and son until
everything changed in 1993. In an auto accident near Buffalo,
New York,
Su's wife, Fu Li, was partially paralyzed with severe head injuries.
Suddenly, Su was consumed with her recovery.
In the memoirs translated
from Chinese, Su describes himself as a
self-absorbed person, using all his energy to fight for democracy in
China.
But the auto accident threw Su into a soul-searching battle.
"I was but a
mediocre creature, mistaken by the world for what I was not," writes
Su.
Constantly attending to
his wife's health consumed Su's time and energy
for much of the 1990s. "My friends and I had thought of ourselves
as
somebodies, had been so cocky about fixing our country, our nation,
our
society, our civilization -- all sick to the core -- yet when we have
to
face the calamity of an individual or a family, our world collapses
beneath
us and we have nothing to hold on to."
When Fu Li's health did
not return to normal, Su reached out for religion.
A fellow intellectual and friend from the Tiananmen Square days
named Yuan
Zhiming had converted to Christianity. "Yuan reached me by telephone
in
Buffalo and told me that in his prayers he heard a voice tell him that
Fu
Li would be saved," Su writes.
Su wondered how his friend
could "embrace the Cross, leaving us all
behind. He invited us to his baptism ceremony. As I saw
him being
immersed in water, the thought 'Will this really change him into a
new
man?' flashed across my mind. It did. The self-confident,
emotional Ph.D.
candidate whose fate had been briefly linked to mine, disappeared,
transformed into an eloquent preacher, highly regarded among Chinese
Christians in the United States."
Su admired Yuan Zhiming's
faith, but he and his disabled wife turned
instead to Qigong and began attending meetings everywhere possible.
Qigong
is the ancient Chinese practice (gong) for cultivating the human body
by
controlling vital energy (qi) through exercise and mediation.
When Fu Li's condition remained
unchanged, a frustrated Su then took her
to a Chinese acupuncturist and even to a Christian faith healing service.
One day Fu Li told Su of
repeated dreams where she is standing by the sea.
A voice from a man of God says, "Let her get on the boat."
Su's Christian
friend Yuan Zhiming heard of the dreams, and said he thought Fu Li
had
converted to Christianity.
Following Fu Li's dream,
Su took her to a summer camp meeting for Chinese
seekers, hoping to discover faith. Su even raised Fu Li's paralyzed
hand
for her when the minister asked who wanted to receive Jesus Christ.
Later
Fu Li told the Chinese minister, "It was because of the dream that
I had.
But I still cannot believe."
Su says that nowadays Fu
Li spends much time alone with her own thoughts.
The book ends with Su confessing, "We still have a long way to go."
Don Follis is an Urbana minister. Reprinted with permission from
the
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, copyright 2001.