My Journey of Faith
Jidian
[Author's note] The following testimony was included in the newly published book Heartreach: The Ongoing Project Dengke Story by British Christian adventurer and philanthropist Professor Mel Richardson (Chapter 18, pp. 153-166). It was slightly revised and updated at the end when it is posted here on the author's blog.
It was close to the sunset time. I went out of the Tibetan
style “
Friendship Center” built by the British Christians and walked to
the new memorial and
museum
of General Dengma (a
historical Tibetan warrior and leader). I was in this small Tibetan village
called Luoxu, or Dengke before it changed its name a few years ago (I am still
used to calling it Dengke). After taking a few photos of the memorial, I walked
towards the river. It is called the “
Jinsha
River”, the Chinese name
for this section of the Yangtze near its source. I stood there with a lot of
emotions in my heart – this was the site where we (the expedition team) camped
with our tents 28 years ago.
This was the summer of 2018. A few days earlier I flew from my
home in the Baltimore (US) suburb to my hometown of
Chengdu,
Sichuan in
China. Then I flew to the Tibetan
city of
Yushu in the
Qinghai
Province, and took a few hours of
ad
hoc minivan-for-hire trip to the little town of
Dengke. I came here to join the Project
Dengke 2018 team and spend a few days with them. It was also a re-visit and a
reunion because I was here with the first British hovercraft expedition in 1990,
although only one member on the 1990 team, Mel Richardson the “nutty professor”,
was here this year.
While listening to the sound of running water in the river,
I thought about how the trip to this exact place 28 years ago impacted on me and
changed my life. I thought about how it influenced my spiritual journey from an
atheist to a Christian. I could not but marvel at God’s grace and providence.
28 years ago, I was a young professional in the city of
Chengdu working for a
chemical industry research institute as a polymer scientist. That was one year
after the “June 4th (incident)”. I might look like a “normal” young man
outside, but I had a lot of pain and struggles deep in my heart. The June 4th
event had very profound impact on me.
I was born into a Chinese intellectual family. Both my
parents graduated from the
Huaxi
Medical University,
which was a Christian medical school established by western missionaries before
the communist era (my parents entered the university after 1949 and were
atheists).
After their graduation, they
were “assigned by the Party” to a very rural, remote and poor Tibetan area in
Sichuan (in the same
Garze Autonomous Tibetan Area as Dengke is) and worked there for more than 20
years.
They spent the best years in
their lives serving people there as medical doctors while living a very hard
life.
I was raised by my grandma in the city of
Chengdu so I could get the educations.
I learnt and knew at a very young age that I
had to study hard, to get outstanding scores and to enter college if I wanted
to escape from having to end up in the poor Tibetan area.
This became the whole purpose of my life and
I studied very hard.
In 1982 I fulfilled
my dream and entered
Fudan University in
Shanghai,
which is one of the best universities in
China
(nicknamed “
China’s
Yale”).
I was only 16 when I left my
hometown to pursue higher education in the thousand-miles-away city of
Shanghai.
All the education I could get in
China was imbued with heavy atheist
teachings.
Fudan University
was known for its academic openness and “westernization”.
While in Fudan, I started to become very
interested in western thoughts and culture (probably more than subjects in my
chemistry major), and began to build up a self-centered worldview and life
philosophy out of the influence by the non-Christian western thoughts.
By then I already had doubted and rebelled
against the “official” communist ideology, but I was not seeking my faith
deeply.
I thought my faith was “I do not
believe in anything”.
After graduation, I went back to
Chengdu and started to work in the research
institute.
I entered the real world
without a fixed faith or a matured worldview.
On one hand, I felt lost and aimless, and learnt to be “just like
everyone else”, wasting time and damaging my own health on “entertainments”
such as playing mahjong (with gambling) all night or drinking
bai jiu
(Chinese hard liquor) to be drunk. On the other hand, deep in my heart, I was
unwilling to sink like others because I thought I still had a little remainder
of the traditional Chinese intellectual style, i.e., Confucian, ideals and
ambitions.
Those ideals and ambitions
were not clear, yet I believed that at least I had the desire to be a good and
useful man to the society and to make contributions to my country.
When the June 4th event happened, I was on the street of
Chengdu with many young
students and intellectuals.
I was much
excited and actively involved in the movement.
Tragically, the flame of our patriot enthusiasm was quickly put out by
cruel reality (similar suppressing took place in
Chengdu
as in
Beijing).
With the feeling of miserable disillusion, my
heart sank to deep darkness and hopelessness.
Without a faith, I was not able to face the reality and I could not find
an answer to my hearts’ questions, and life became meaningless and unbearably
painful.
I was totally lost and broken
spiritually.
I tried hard to escape this feeling of being lost by seeking
money and pleasure, but I totally failed to get any real satisfaction from
those.
Moreover, the surroundings around
me were showing me how treacherous and dark human hearts could be every
day.
I started to realize that “the
heart of the problem is the problem of heart”, and how insignificant and
pitiful I was myself.
With all those
incurable weaknesses of myself, I was unable to go beyond myself, let alone to
practise the Confucian idealism of “cultivation of personality, regulation of
family, order of the nation, and peace and harmony of the world”.
In the spiritual pain and thirst, I began to realize the
desperate needs for a transcendent faith.
I started to seek philosophical and religious knowledge.
I read a lot about things of “spiritual”
nature, which ranged from western philosophy to traditional Chinese beliefs,
and even included things like
Qi Gong and fortune telling.
Occasionally I would find a little sparkle of
human wisdom in those writings, but they did not give me any significant
answers.
Some of my readings were related
to Christianity, but most of them in were very negative, criticizing and even
attacking Christianity as a superstitious religion or imperialist tool.
Only a few books were introducing Christian
thoughts as one kind of western philosophical or cultural resource.
One of books was authored by Dr. Liu Xiaofeng
who was later deemed a leading “cultural Christian”.
The book was titled “Salvation and Carefree-ness”,
and in it Christian worldview was compared with other western and oriental
thoughts and cultures.
In a strange way,
this book created some affinity and good impression for Christianity on me.
At the same time, God also gave me a few opportunities to
know some Christian friends, although there were so few of them in
China.
Then came my encounter with the British
hovercraft expedition. In 1990, with my English speaking ability, I took some
tests and got a license to lead tourist groups as an interpreter guide. One day
on the campus of
Huaxi
Medical University,
I met a few guys of the British team, and chatted with them. (One of them was
Gwyn Davies-Scourfield, and a picture of me talking with him on that day is in
Dick Bell’s
To the Source of Yangtze.) And they were very friendly with
me and we saw each other for a few more times for me to practice my English
with them. I learned that the team would use hovercraft to go upstream the
Yangtze to the source of the river, and to access the Tibetan areas along the
banks of the river’s upstream.
Besides
scientific investigations, they would send medicines and technologies to those
remote areas for humanitarian aids by the unique way of transportation. So within
the group they had a polymer science and engineering team led by Mel
Richardson, and a medical team led by “Dr. Ray” (Rachel Grace Pinniger).
And then the head of a mountaineer group in a Chinese
geography research institute came to me and asked me if I would take a
temporary job as the interpreter for him and join them to accompany and assist
the British expedition team in the Garze-Shiqu area. Garze, Tibetan, medical,
polymer…, all these words naturally bring upon my heart connections to my
background, and I was more than willing to take the job, although I dared not
tell my boss at my research institute (those were the days when Deng Xiaoping
just opened China’s door to the world, and the first wave just arose of Chinese
intellectuals taking “the second career” to make extra money, which was
forbidden before.)
So I went on the journey to Dengke with the British team and
their Chinese company.
I soon learnt
that the British side was a team consisted mostly of Christians, and they had
to face a lot of difficulties and challenges in Graze. Not only did they have
to face the extremely harsh geographical environment in the areas near the
source of Yangtze, but also they had to deal with the most frustrating
bureaucracy and materialist greed of the Chinese side.
It even made me to lose heart and patience
and get angry.
However, I saw with my
own eyes how these Christians prayed and trusted their God to face the
difficulties, and how they showed their Christian love, not only to the people
they helped (mostly the Tibetans), but also to those who made it difficult for
them, with forgiveness and understanding. I became the team’s friend and in
many things I was obviously on their side instead of the Chinese side.
I saw how they worshiped on Sundays in their tents on the
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (with Mel playing guitar for the hymns). But more
impressively, I saw how Dr. Ray gave vaccination to little Tibetan kids, and
how the team talked to a few Tibetans with leprosy and prayed for them, much to
the dismay and fear of the Chinese side. I saw the British gentlemen physically
labored hard to remove rocks that blocked the road. I saw how kind the team
members were to the Tibetan villagers and how much they desired to help the
Tibetans by building a simple bridge or a humble house… The British Christians’
positive attitude to life and their unwavering faith in God gave me such a
wonderful and powerful testimony during the more than one month’s time I lived
and worked together with them, even though they did not get much time to tell
me about God and study the Bible with me.
The expedition was later broadcasted in
Britain and on CCTV (the national
station of China Central TV), including scenes of their Sunday worship on the
highland by the River. I was punished by the research institute by announcing
on the big PA system to hundreds of my colleagues my mistake and the official condemnation,
for going beyond my vacation days (because of delay by a big snow storm) and
not telling the truth about the trip. But as the Chinese idiom says, I also
“got goodness out of misfortune”.
A
beautiful young lady was in the audience and was impressed with my ability to
commit such a “crime”. I later managed to date her and today she is my wife.
More important than that is the British Christians’ good witness, which canceled
out a lot of my preconceived misunderstandings and aversion towards Christianity,
paving the way for my conversion.
After the expedition, a young friend of mine told me that he
had become a Christian, and invited me to one of their house church Bible study
gatherings.
I was amazed to see a group
of young intellectuals with similar background as mine pray, sing hymns, study
the Bible and share together.
However,
at that time, I knew almost nothing about God and the Bible, and my good
impression of Christianity was only on the cultural and intellectual
level.
I did not even think about
personal relationship with God and what it means for my life.
In August 1992, I came to the
United
States to pursue graduate study (in chemistry) at the
University of Alabama and to seek my “America
Dream”.
Being able to “make it” abroad
was not easy at all for a young Chinese intellectual.
Besides the academic challenges (only the
very top ones with exceedingly good TOEFL and GRE scores could get the
admission and financial aid), it was extremely difficult to get the passport
from the Chinese authority (especially because I was involved in the June 4th
event) and the visa from the American Consulate.
I spent four days and four nights in front of
the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, and nearly missed my I-20 form for the visa (it
was lost and the replica did not get in my hand until the last day before my
interview with the Consulate).
Thinking
back today, it is clear that I was able to come to the
US only because God’s loving hand
was working behind everything.
The first period of time after I arrived in
Alabama was very tough,
since I had to endure loneness away from my family and my newly wedded wife,
and to cope with new life in a strange land.
During that time, I got much help from some fellow Chinese graduate
students and their families, most of whom I soon found out to be Christians young
in their Christian lives. They picked me up from the airport on day one, gave
me rides to shop, invited me to their homes for Chinese meals, picked up old
mattress others threw away for me to use as bed (there was no furniture in my
apartment in the beginning), and offered many other helps.
They took me to their Bible studies and I got
to know many other Christian friends, Chinese and American.
Their loving deeds and kind help brought a
lot of warmth to me, and I was much touched by the love they lived out which I
knew had to come from their Christian faith.
The peace and joy from their lives were so real and inspiring and just
as my experience with the British expedition team, it again caused me to desire
to have such a life.
The Bible studies in the Chinese Christian Fellowship in the
small southern college town gave me much-needed opportunities to learn about
the basic but accurate doctrines of Christianity.
In the beginning I had tons of questions to
ask, and was quite a difficult and tough seeker. Fortunately the Bible studies
were very open, and the Christian friends responded to my harsh, opinionated
and provoking questions with much patience and wisdom. My knowledge and
understanding increased quickly with all the debates and discussions. I started
to realize that I had a lot of misunderstanding and prejudice to Christianity,
and I had to overcome many obstacles out of my atheist and rationalist thinking
paradigm.
The much profound thinking and
discussion on issues such as the true-ness of the bible, creation vs.
evolution, faith and reason, and Christianity vs. other religions and cultures,
etc., convinced me that the Christian belief is truth and broke my intellectual
stronghold bit by bit. The Bible and Jesus’ teachings had even greater impact
on my seeking heart.
But the greatest factor of all was the Christian love that
Christians had demonstrated in their actions. It was shocking and very
thought-provoking to me. I had grown up in the communist culture of hatred,
which taught us to hate our enemy in the class struggle. Mao famously said that
“there is absolutely no love in this world without reason”. But by the Yangtze
river in the Tibetan village and in the little college town of
US south, I did experience and witness a kind
of love that has no worldly reason. I knew that it was impossible that I can
repay the love and caring from my Christian friends. I knew that they did what
they did purely out of Christian charity, as a true expression of their faith
and their value. They were first loved and saved by God. Their real testimony
is strong evidence of the biblical truth.
On one Sunday in October 1992, I was attending worship with
friends in a local American church (
Tuscaloosa
First Baptist
Church).
I do not remember much about the details of what
the pastor preached that day, but my heart was so touched by God that tears
filled my eyes.
I realized what a sinner
I was, and was strongly moved by Christ’s love to turn to God.
When the pastor asked people who decided to
accept Christ as their Savior and Lord to come to the front, I stood up as if I
lost control of myself, and I walked to the front and hold the pastor’s hands.
I told him I wanted to accept Christ and my savior and Lord right there and
right then.
Soon after that, I was
baptized in the same church.
A few years ago I was surfing on the Chinese Q&A website
of Zhihu (which is similar to Quora, but arguably better, and influential among
Chinese intellectuals). One answer to the question “under what circumstance did
you believe in God?” caught my attention. It was written by a Chinese man in
film-making industry, who called himself Mr. Luo Deng (pen-name). Mr. Luo said
in his answer that his spiritual journey was influenced by a group of British
Christians he came across in Garze. He said that the British team was going to
Dengke to do charity work, and he was so moved by their love and faith. I
immediately realized that he was talking about the same group as the 1990
expedition team, because I knew Mel had led teams to Dengke after the first
expedition for many years. I was very excited to see another guy with the same
experience as mine. I contacted Mr. Deng privately and also answered the same
question sharing my own story. Later another netter commented under my answer
and said that she had the same experience too when she worked with the team as
an interpreter. In the 2018 Dengke trip I met more interpreters for the team
who have become Christians. Apparently serving as an interpreter on the Project
Dengke team has been used by God greatly as a means of evangelizing Chinese young
men and women!
I was very moved by the stories on Zhihu. Luo Deng’s answer
got tons of likes and people appreciate one sentence in it most. What he said
can be literally translated into English as the following: “I believe that the
best evangelism is the lifestyle of a Christian.” During the 2018 Dengke
Project trip, I had opportunity to share with the team my conversion story and
encourage the teammates using the Scripture ( I used Matthew 5:13-16 that calls
Christians to be salt and light of the world) as well as Mr. Luo’s words to
make the point of what significance the Project has that is related to
evangelism.
Back to my own journey of faith. Baptism was only the
beginning of my new spiritual journey. My life was greatly changed after I
became a Christian, even though I was not always fully aware of it.
My worldview and value were transformed by
the Word of God.
The self-centered-ness,
self-righteousness and denial of God’s existence were replaced by the
repentance of my sins, obedience to God and a thankful heart. I had sought the
meaning of life with such pain, and now I am able to know the true and only God,
the Creator of the universe and Keeper of our lives, through Jesus Christ. I am
able to have a close relationship with God through prayers and studying His
Word, and experience His guidance in my daily life. I can now experience the
peace and joy that transcend the surroundings and the more abundant life that
Christ gives us, just as the British team did.
My wandering heart has found the ultimate anchor, and my lost soul has
found the eternal home.
That does not mean that my journey after conversion was all
smooth, or my spiritual growth did not take time. After I graduated from the
University of
Alabama
with a Master of Science degree in 1995, I started working in the chemical
industry in the
US,
and I worked in that field for 16 years, most of the time as an R&D
technical manager. Later my wife and I had two sons (born in 1996 and 2003
respectively). I went through many difficulties and challenges in my marriage,
my family, my career and my serving inside and outside the church.
But the Lord is faithful and his grace is sufficient. Many
things happened in my life. I learned in my career and in my family life, as
well as my serving on the Internet and in the Chinese churches (I have
worshiped and served in a number of Chinese churches in the
US). I learned from my mistakes and
failures, and God let me grow in various areas of my life. The journey is
filled with my weakness, but it is also filled with God’s leading and
providence.
One example is my writing “career”. I started writing about
Christianity on the Chinese Internet in 1995 (when the Chinese Internet was
just starting with very primitive technologies) because I felt the need for
apologetic involvement, and I have since been active on the Chinese cyberspace
and new media (Zhihu is but one example), dialoging with global Chinese intellectuals
and evangelizing with my writings and podcast. In 1996 I joined the Chinese
Christian Internet Mission as one of its earliest core co-workers. In 1998 I
created the evangelist and apologetic website “Jidian’s Links” (“Jidian”, the
Chinese
pin yin for “Gideon”, is my pen-name), which provided resources
of apologetics and Christian culture to Chinese netters.
In 2009 I published my first book in Chinese (a collection
of apologetic dialogs with non-believers) in the U. S. In 2012 I published my
second book (a collection of my blog essays on Christian culture and belief) in
China.
Today I am known as a writer in
China,
and I was allowed to give talks about Christianity in the Christian bookstores
and coffee houses in many Chinese cities. After many years of writing on the
Internet, I am regarded as one of the earliest “internet missionaries” on the
Chinese internet, both by Chinese intellectuals and by the Chinese communist
government - I was named as one of “the most influential (by which they meant
‘dangerous’) internet missionaries” in an official paper on a Communist Youth League
Central Committee journal warning Chinese about the “invasion of western
ideology under the disguise of religion”.
I also became a core author for
Overseas Campus (OC),
a well-known evangelical magazine for Chinese intellectuals founded in the
U. S.
at the same year when I became a Christian (1992). In 2011, I was called by God
to make a career change to serve God full time and I joined the Overseas Campus
Ministries (OCM) to lead the ministry’s Internet mission. (I responded to God’s
calling for the first time at a Campus Crusade for Christ conference way back
in 1993.) I have since helped establish multiple new media products, such as
the electronic magazine
e-OC, the OC WeChat Public Accout (which had 70,000
subscribers before being shut down by the Chinese authority in December 2018),
the OC Fuyin website (
ocfuyin.org,
fuyin
being the Chinese phonetic of “the Gospel”), and the evangelist “Jidian’s Chat”
podcast (
http://ocfuyin.org/category/jdlt).
I also lead the work of the paper magazine of
OC as its chief editor. It
is purely by God’s grace that I became a full-time Christian worker in
media and new media from a scientist background.
My work at OCM went much beyond writing, recording,
editing and project management. I gave evangelist talks in Chinese
churches in North America and Asia (
China,
Hong Kong,
Taiwan,
Japan,
Malaysia, etc.). (Because of my
background in science, I started speaking on “science vs. Christian faith” in
China as
early as in 2000, and now my evangelist talks include many other topics.) I was an evangelist speaker and preacher for Chinese churches in North
America and
Asia. I also give trainings on
evangelism, discipleship, apologetics, students and returnees ministries, Christian
life, etc. I served as speaker in various Christian conferences.
Near the end of 2019, I responded to God's new call and joined a mission organization to serve God and diaspora Chinese in the U. S. In my
local church (a Chinese church in Maryland), I serve by
leading bible studies and teaching Sunday school. I am studying theology
at the Reformed Theological Seminary Global, working towards an MAR degree
while working full time. I also serve in the TGC (The Gospel Coalition)
Chinese team. During the COVID time I started my evangelist livestreaming on YouTube:
http://tinyurl.com/JidianYT, and continued to preach, teach and train Chinese Christians using the Internet tools. I look forward to many more
years of serving our Lord.
Looking back on my spiritual journey, I am with great awe
and thankfulness for God’s Grace on me.
I believe that it is not by any “coincident”, but by the leading of
God’s own loving hands, that I have become what I am today.
My story is just another testimony of God’s
amazing Grace, infinite Love and great Power.
I pray that I will be endowed the faith and strength to serve God and
follow Christ all my life.
Browse Jidian's multi-media evangelist website
