After the article "Christian Daughter v.s. Buddhist Mother: How The Two Stayed in Peace and Love" was published, some agreed with my opinions (that I'm not eager to preach and not alone persuade my family to convert), while others disagreed.
Now I would like to reply to those opposing my opinions.
There are two types of comments among those opponents.
God is jealous and He abhors idolatry. As a Christian, he should not help his family members worship idols.
It is right to show mutual respect; but, it is not reasonable to not stop family members from walking on the path to destruction.
Whether a person may go to hell or heaven is not determined by a simple act done by another person; but, it is determined by God.
Whoever does not believe in Jesus will surely go to hell regardless of his life? I do not think anyone has the right to answer or judge people like that.
"God does not show favoritism." "He will judge everyone according to his actions." Not everyone who calls to Jesus Christ will surely be saved nor will Gentiles surely perish.
However, you will rightly say that in the Old Testament, Israelites were punished or killed many times by God because of their idolatry. The holy and jealous God does not permit anyone to worship false gods. Christians should not help others to worship false gods.
Someone once raised an important question: "If holiness and justice can be realized in heaven alone, how can man live by and realize God's holiness and justice on earth?"
The one who raised the question answered, "That was the work of Jesus, God's incarnation, who brought the Gospel of Kingdom of Heaven to humankind and who realized God's holiness and justice by loving on earth. When the resurrected Christ said that all authority from heaven and earth had been given to him, that was the start of a new era for God's holiness and justice. It had been realized through the love of Christ and in the journey to heaven.
Apostle Paul defined "love" in 1 Corinthians 13. Now that love is important and "all laws are contained in loving others as you love yourself," how should we practice love towards our family members who are not believers of Christ?
If we scold, plead with or persuade our family members to believe in Jesus regardless of their faiths, we are not loving them. We are standing in our own shoes and see only whether they have faiths and the faiths they have, failing to see them as persons. In other words, we do not understand why they have their faiths or why they do not have faiths.
Without understanding, love is just a nice slogan with empty morals. Only when we stand on our family members' shoes, seeing and understanding them for who they are, can we truly accept them. That is the basis of love.
It is similar to when Jesus showed us true love and acceptance by dying for when we were sinners.
Jesus loved everyone he met regardless of who they were and what they did, including the despised prostitutes, tax collectors and Samaritans. When treating men, Jesus showed acceptance, care and mercy to them as men before him considered their background and corrected their mistakes.
Jesus is different from us. We sometimes require our family members, as if we were God, to change their will according to our will and that they come to believe in Jesus quickly. We even arrogantly demand that they believe in Jesus at our preaching immediately. If they do not follow after a long time, we say to them that their heart is hardened.
Jesus even gave an ironic example about a good Samaritan despised by Jews, who showed love for a stranger. In the example, the stranger met robbers who beat him half dead but priests and Levites did not stop to care for him when they passed by him. After Jesus finished teaching this story, he was asked by person who asked the question about who was his neighbor and to do the same thing as the Samaritan did.
Because I wanted to understand my mom, accept her and love her, I gave up trying to convert her to Christianity and started to look for a temple for her. To show I love her, I needed to enter into her life and see her for who she was.
If we want to see a person for who he is, we need to lay down our stubborn thoughts. However, if we say to ourselves, "How can he follow other faiths? How can he still refuse to believe in Jesus after a long time?" it means that we have not seen the person for who he is. We only see the person in our imaginations and as a result, we cannot love the person from our heart.
Love is the strongest power we can have. Only when a man feels love can he be changed. Similarly, all of us Christians decided to follow Jesus and change ourselves because of His amazing love.
Although we long for our family members to believe in Jesus out of love for them, if they have not felt being loved and were forced by us and we do not respect their faith, our love fails. Accepting a person means accepting him for who he is instead of accepting the person partially. Therefore, the reason our family members resent us when we preaching the Gospel to them is not because they have a hardened heart; but, because we have not accepted and loved them for who they are. God's timing has not come yet, which is determined by us.
I do not want to spread the Gospel for the sake of spreading the Gospel. I do not want to preach, force or threaten my mom with the saying that if she does not believe in Jesus, she will go to hell. I will try to share with her my faith at the right moment; but, it is God who determines whether or not she will come to believe in Jesus and no one but God determines whether or not she will go to be with God in eternity.
I am reminded of the review on the movie "Hacksaw Ridge". In the movie, the main character Desmond Doss of Adventist Sect saved 75 men who had different faiths. Some of these men had ridiculed his faith and even sued him to the military tribunal. Many Christians criticized those supporting Doss, saying that they are leading people astray.
Everyone was created by God and no one is better than the other. God can use each and every life He created such as Doss. When we criticize Doss and his supporters in spiritual superiority, have we thought about the possibility that God is testing our narrow-minded faith through Doss' action?
I also recall ancient missionaries to China. They did not correct Chinese Confucianism; but, they stood in Chinese shoes and followed it, wearing braids, reading Confucian classics and living by Confucian rituals and traditions. They even lived by Confucianism more deeply than the Chinese. Can we say that they were leading Chinese to destruction?
No. It was because of their understanding, acceptance and love that the Gospel could grow in China.
I would like to conclude with a sister's word. She said, "For the arrogant, there is no friendship; but, people of the same interests, from the same group, with the same goal. However, Christ says that "you have drawn a circle excluding me; but, I have drawn a bigger circle including you."
Translated by Alvin Zhou
