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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....

Saturday, October 01, 2005

I was studying at the Reading Cafe this evening, when a young lady came and sat down at my table. Nothing unusual about that. It happens quite often. They're usually English majors. Tina has just graduated from BLCU, and she has gotten a good job with a state-owned enterprise. I asked her how she liked her job. She told me that it wasn't really what she was interested in. I asked her to elaborate. She said that many students in China have majors that they don't really like; they choose them because of their parents, or because they think that this major will help them to get a good job. I said, "If you could snap your fingers and instantly be qualified for any job, what would it be?" She told me that she wanted to educate people. I told her that as long as she remembers her goal, everything that she is doing now would help her to be a better teacher in the future.

She asked me if I had a religious belief, and I told her that I was a Christian. As with many Chinese young people I talk to, she was very interested in hearing about my belief. Interest in Christianity is very high in China right now. Educated young people tend not to be involved, because they have been taught for so long that belief in God is naive. But they express to me often their feeling of loss at not having anything to believe in.

As I am writing this, I am listening to Christian Classics, and Millie Dawson a New Tribes missionary to the Rain Forest of Venezuela is talking about how they were saddened by hearing how many in America are turning to the very religious beliefs that she and her husband have worked so hard and for so many years to deliver the rain forest people from. She talks about how they actually sent a Rain forest Christian to America to preach to University students who were becoming infatuated with the pagan religions from which he had been freed.

It is a tragic thing to see a country like America, which has known so much greatness, turn from the light, and move toward the darkness. I often tell people in China that America is a civilization that is dying spiritually, but that China is a country that has been given another chance. When people ask me how I feel about China, I always tell them that I am "cautiously optimistic." I see mixed signals in this enormously complicated society. There are many signs of God's Spirit moving. But there are also ominous signs of growing materialism--the belief that money can solve all problems and bring happiness.

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