LOST AND BEWILDERED
Both Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 boldly declare, "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God."
Often, in the midst of an adversity or tragedy, many such godless people instinctively turn to God in prayer. In their heart of hearts, they know better.
As far as I can remember, I have always believed that there is a God. Nobody taught me this universal Truth. I believe that God exists as naturally as I breathe air.
However, I did not believe in Him, that is to say, I did not put my trust in Him. I had never doubted His bigness and power; but I most definitely doubted His love and concern for poor human beings like us. I saw Him as a big bully and we as helpless creatures who could not fend for ourselves.
Life under God’s control, as I viewed it, was haphazard – full of accidents, sicknesses and wars. To me, life was meaningless and God was uncaring. Therefore, I had no faith in Him.
I was born into a Taoist family. Like most idol-worshipers, my parents claimed to be Buddhists, despite the fact that they knew next to nothing about Buddhism.
True worshipers of Buddha do not worship idols or dead ancestors. In fact, Buddha himself, humble as he was, had never instructed his followers to worship him.
But like many Chinese in those days, my parents worshiped a great variety of gods. Being fearful and superstitious, they sought to worship whatever their relatives, friends and neighbors recommended. Yet, for many years, they mistakenly thought they were Buddhists.
Although my heart was not in it, I blindly followed them and also called myself a Buddhist. This is a basic error in belief among most Chinese families. They have no basis for worship to begin with.
Even till today, most people, who claim to be Buddhists, are actually Taoists. And they are not even practicing Taoists because they know very little about both Buddhism and Taoism.
It is, therefore, not far-fetched to state that most people who claim to be Buddhists are wearing that religious label out of filial piety. It is important to understand that we should not be honoring our parents by blindly following their religious errors. But instead, we should objectively seek the Truth and then lead them out of errors into God’s Truth. That is the greatest honor we can pay our parents.
When I was a little boy, I was terribly fearful of the many idols I had seen. They looked so fierce and menacing. I was told that they were carved out of wood or stone and painted to look angry and hostile so as to ward off evil spirits.
But I reasoned within myself that they looked so evil themselves. Even the supposedly gentler-looking statues looked ghostly and scary to me. I wasn’t sure if they could ward off evil spirits or they were evil spirits themselves; but I was certain that they were no deities. In fact, they put me off.
When I was in my teens, I could not help noticing that those so-called gods were so confined to specific places determined by the worshipers, and they were so helpless too.
When my aunty was about to shift house, she brought down her dusty idols from a high, blackened corner of the room to wash and clean them up. After drying their stained bodies, she put new clothes on them. They still looked fierce but helpless – fiercely helpless. The sight of it all seemed so strange and unbelievable.
Not long after I had become a Christian, I was talking to a carpenter in his workshop. In those days, my evangelistic fervor was totally devoid of wisdom and sensitivity.
Trying to provoke him to reason objectively about his man-made god, I said, "You can move freely, but your god is fixed by you in a spot. So what’s the point of worshiping such a god?"
He smiled proudly and said, "You don’t understand, that’s the way I like it. When I want him to bless me, I will come to him where he is. When I want to go to a bar to drink and enjoy myself, he cannot see me."
I was speechless because he still couldn’t see the point. Perhaps he also thought that I was a dummy because I chose a God Who could see me in everything that I do as He is with me everywhere I go.
As a child, my heart was filled with uncertainties, doubts and fears. I could not trust the idols because I knew that they were powerless. I could not trust the powerful God because I thought He was uncaring. I could not trust my adult relatives to teach and instruct me in religious things because they were so lost and bewildered themselves. So I was left on my own to figure out the mysteries of life in order to make some sense out of sheer nonsense.