OCM Vol24 Page30 The Three Portraits

Those who do not believe in the Lord have various reasons. Those who do, however, must have experienced the Lord's grace that enriches their souls or have life testimonies that impact their hearts.

Portraits Under the Glass Top

My first experience of seeing a portrait of Jesus was that of tasting the forbidden fruit. I was born into an ordinary family among the well-educated. Everybody in the family had been a teacher at some point. Having gone through a series of political movements, our family, like everybody else, had got rid of all the evidence of feudalism, capitalism and revisionism. Numerous political house cleanings, however, failed to prevent my parents from preserving a few little items either in a locked desk drawer or under the glass top of their desk, things they treasured so much that they ventured not to throw away. Although my parents told me again and again not to touch or peek these things, it was these forbidden items that often aroused my curiosity. So finally I discovered the three portraits under the glass top. The first one was Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, ready to be crucified. The second was a Ukrainian dancing girl whose clothes were as thin as cricket wings. The third portrait was a charcoal painting of Zhou En-lai. These three portraits annotated my parents' past ideology: They had been part of a choir in church, they had appreciated the Soviet's communist blueprint, and they had wanted to follow Zhou to become new intellectuals in participation of the industrial and agricultural revolution.

I had often raised the glass top to look at these three portraits, but I had had no idea one of them was the portrait of Christ Jesus. Thick thorns penetrated the forehead and fresh blood dripped down along the lowered face. His face looked painful yet calm. You could find in the raised eyes a little bit sadness mixed with firmness. The portrait of the Ukrainian girl had caused me a lot of day dreams, but later on I liked the portrait of Jesus the most. I could feel the spirit in his eyes; his temperament and his image seemed to be revealing the fact that this person was bleeding in heart for the world. Once I had felt sorry that this portrait wasn't wearing a Chinese head, or else it would have become the best portrayal of China's then dark ages.

The Bible Wrapped in Red Plastic Cover

In 1974, I went back to the city and began to work in a little factory. Thanks to the slow business under the influence of the Cultural Revolution, I often spent a lot of time during work hours chatting with other workers who went through college or high school like me and we often threw political commentaries at each other. In the eyes of the others we were considered a circle of rotten intellectuals. One day on my way back to work, I saw a female fellow worker reading attentively next to a machine tool not far from me. Curiosity drove me forward. She was so deep in her reading that she didn't notice me approaching when I discovered that the book wrapped in red plastic cover, the kind of cover that was supposed to wrap Mao's books, was a Bible. In those dark ages, if I had disclosed this information, I would have immediately become a model fighter for the cause of class struggle. But the female worker was in the circle of the rotten intellectuals like me, a daughter of a pre-communist regime college grad and a high school graduate herself. How could I betray one of us? I made up my mind not to, but I thought I would help her soul and prevent her from falling into the pit of superstition, as Lenin once said that religion was the product of weakness.

We started our lengthy argument and that lasted almost two years. In the beginning, I made very critical and harsh comments when I attempted to convince her with my own knowledge and reasoning. Words were sharp and painful to hear. Sometimes I believed I had completely ripped her to the extent that I could even see tears in her eyes. When this happened, she would bow her head and pray for the Lord's forgiveness of my blasphemous words and ask the Lord to tell her what she would do to convince me. Meanwhile, I felt pretty good about myself; other times I felt a bit regretful for my own words; still other times I felt both. As time slipped by, however, her words started to become convincing whereas I started to see the bottom of my knowledge bank. The fundamental reason was she seemed to know all I knew and yet what she knew was completely foreign to me. While she had transcended into understanding after all the questioning, hesitation and searching, I was still wandering at the gate of intelligence. As she was explaining her standpoint, I suddenly realized that the portrait we had at home was very likely the portrait of Christ. When we managed to find out the portrait was indeed that of Jesus, the distance between us immediately shortened. Our war was officially over when she gave me a little Bible designed for the American overseas soldiers. She urged me to finish it and digest it before launching any new attacks. My official surrender came shortly after that when I found myself hopeless in front of human reality and I asked her to pray for me and to teach me how to pray.

Later I attended their family gatherings. The Lord answered many of my prayers, although my spiritual growth was still lacking. I somehow felt that I enjoyed the low-voiced singing in a behind-the-door atmosphere and I like delicious post-gathering food much more than the Bible itself and spiritual achievement. This being the case, after I entered a southern university to study foreign affairs, I began to plan for working in foreign countries and for my personal future, while I consciously or subconsciously stayed away from those family gatherings and my Christian friends. Furthermore, western literature greatly influenced me and I gradually developed a kind of religious faith featuring a middle class style, i.e., I respected the Lord but I didn't impose the Lord's teachings on my daily life; I agreed with church and Christ but only to the extent that I didn't deny its existence; I prayed at crucial moments, but most of the time I still relied on my own wisdom and strength; I appreciated Christians' devotion to the Lord's cause and their deeds, but I remained indifferent when the opportunities of serving the Lord fell on me; I did not deny that the Bible was our daily bread, but I still did whatever I felt like it; I believed in the Lord, but not without my own standards and understanding. I even laughed at other Christian fellows for their intellectual blindness and religious formality. In all, I was not very far away from being an atheist participating in mass.

A Professor's Funeral Ceremony

During one of those Christian gatherings I could not find an excuse not to attend, I met a female college teacher, whose experience and testimony completely changed my mind and my attitude toward life.

This college teacher and her husband made up their mind to devote themselves to the Lord after they earned their biology degrees. So they both stepped into a seminary for further study. By the time they graduated from the seminary, the Communist Party took over Mainland China and they both were made teachers in the biology department of a university. Under constant education from political movement and theory, their soul seemed to have changed their cause and they started to adopt the atheist and materialistic standpoint. Her husband published a book From Apes To Men. The book was considered a masterpiece in this research field and it almost became a classic. It became part of the mandatory reading for all students majoring in biology and any other related fields. As a result, honors and ranks poured onto the author one after another. Shortly before the Cultural Revolution was over, however, he suddenly became a cancer victim. His was parotid cancer, a very rare cancer case indeed. At that time, about 0.02% of the Chinese population had cancer. Less than 0.3% of the cancer patients had stomatology cancer. And only a handle of these had parotid cancer. According to statistics, the probability of having parotid cancer was close to zero. So most of the cancer research institutes didn't even bother to categorize it but simply treated it as a rare case. The ailment caused him tremendous sufferings. What brought him the most pain was his face became distorted. The upper half of his face shrank while the lower half expanded, making him look like an ape. All of a sudden he realized that he was too far away from the Lord. God called upon him once more at the historical moment when a new society was about to begin. The couple resumed Bible studies and prayers. They also decided to spend the remaining moments of their life to work for the Lord, so they started to semi-secretly preach the words of God. Their prayers greatly reduced his ailing sufferings and he was able to once again work for the Lord in his final days. He also confessed to God of his sins and waited to be called with tremendous calmness. He also planned his own funeral ceremony in detail.

The ceremony began with Cultural Revolution rituals: university Party leaders entered one after another to pay him final respect. When the curtain was unfolded, everybody was greatly surprised to see a cross hanging at his chest. Party leaders were scared and didn't know what to do. After much confusion they demanded that the cross be removed before they proceeded to bow to him or else all Party members would boycott the ceremony. His family members replied that wearing the cross was the only thing the deceased had wished and they refused to remove it. As a result, all Party members as well as those who wanted to show they were with the Party and those who didn't want to get into trouble backed out. And the ceremony went on without them.

Later on the university broke all promises they made to the survived wife. She and her family never managed to move into a new apartment as promised. Their children never managed to come back to work in the university as originally promised. The wife, however, didn't care. She followed all her husband had to say before he died and devoted her very self to serve the Lord. She visited patients, helped Bible study and preached the Gospel… her fragile and delicate body was seen traveling between the rural and metropolitan areas every day.

This story made a great impact on me. He was such a well-known professor. To negate his life-long research achievement in his final days took an enormous amount of strength and uprightness. In those seemingly forever dark ages, he put up his last fight and announced to the public of his return to the Lord. This thunderous announcement required tremendous courage. His entire life raised to the world a fundamental question for which it also provided a perfect answer: What is the purpose of human life? The purpose is to become a new being in Christ and receive a rich and everlasting life.

Confronting the Everlasting

Rumor has it that Zhou En-lai had asked to see a pastor before he died. Nobody knows whether it was for his confession or for other things. The mystery may remain unsolved forever, but the testimony right in front of me proves far more than enough for me. Since then I have never had any doubt about God, nor have I abandoned God. Throughout my journey of life, there have been easy times and there have been hard times; there have been times I move forward and there have been times I move backward. No matter what happens, this testimony constantly strengthens the basis of my faith. I married a Christian wife and together we built a family. Whenever I move to a new place, we immediately look for a local church where there are Sunday services, fellowships, sharing and green pasture land….

I wanted to share all these with everybody, hoping more overseas students will come to know the Lord and embrace the Lord and strengthen our basis of faith. Among overseas students, some are very successful, others are still struggling; some are ambitious and talented, others are realistic and ordinary. In the future some will win Nobel, Pulitzer or Oscar or will own their large businesses. Still others will become clerks or blue-collar workers. No matter what you are, you will soon confront the fundamental issue in life.

Some have concluded that life can be covered in seven words: "He is born, he suffers, he dies." This applies to kings or ordinary people alike. Life is meaningless. Simon, a Nobel Prize winner, summarized his life in much the same way: "I'm an old man now. Although my life has been full of colorful events, I have yet to find any purpose behind these events; if there is a reason for the world to exist, this reason must be that such existence is meaningless."

Why should we wait till this kind of tragic solution also fall on us? While confronting the everlasting, we mortals simply cannot understand ourselves, nor our life. We won't be able to feel the abundance of life without the craftsmanship of the Holy Spirit. Let us go to church together, worship the Lord, love and help each other and drink living water together.

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Abridged from page 30-32, August 1997 issue of Overseas Campus Magazine.

The author graduated from the World Economics Department in Fu Dan University and studied in Fu Dan's graduate school in the International Finance Department. He came to study in Hawaii in 1989. He now lives in America.

This article was provided for by the Chinese College Fellowship of the Hawaiian Chinese Church.