Here is an index of this quarter's postings (September '08 to November '08). Clicking on the titles will take you to that post.

During this period the blog recorded over 10,000 page views - thanks everyone for reading!

I wasn't able to be as regular with posting this quarter - I had two essays to knock off for a course I was doing at Moore College on the Puritans. Maybe I'll write something about the Puritans sometime soon.

This quarter featured a couple of interesting maps of Chinese ministries in Sydney (02 and 25 Sept). Also on 09 Sept you'll find an article on modernism, that complements the recent series on the influence of Confucianism on Chinese culture. Also interesting is a recent couple of posts on the Chinese understanding of sin (20 and 24 Nov).

Looking for something to read through with your leadership team? Consider the post on 29 Sept on Generation Y, the post on 10 Nov about PDI, or the post on 02 Oct on evangelism!

September 2008


October 2008


November 2008


[ PS: during this period, which were your favourite posts? which ones did you feel strongly about? ]

In a previous post we saw how the influence of Confucianism on Chinese culture predisposes Chinese readers towards an optimistic view of human nature. Confucianism denies original sin, and so paves the way for Pelagianism and Arminianism in the Chinese church. However Mark Strand's article "Explaining Sin in a Chinese Context" also raised the issue of how the translators of the Chinese Bible chose to render the Greek word for 'sin' (hamartia)...

By far the most commonly used Chinese translation of the Bible today is the Union Version. That translation was first completed by a group of Protestant scholars in 1919 and is now the most widely used Chinese translation both inside and outside China today.

However translators of the Union Version chose to use the Chinese word 'zui' to translate 'sin'. This was an unfortunate choice becasue 'zui' has the meaning of a crime committed against the laws of the government. And to further cement the misunderstanding, 'zui' is also used to translate the word 'crime' in the Union Version. And so instead of sin having its full biblical weight of meaning, sin is narrowed down to only include the relatively small area of crime.

This has the effect of making Chinese readers of the Union Version think they are only sinners if they are criminals. And those sins which the government doesn't have laws against - such as pride or greed or even adultery - aren't really considered 'zui'. And so a Chinese reader could mistakenly believe that they aren't really a sinner at all - instead that category is reserved for those desparate thugs who are pursued by police and get locked up in the government's jails. And those sins which Christians are called to put off, aren't considered to be serious at all.

Mark Strand even cites the example of a prominent church leader who was involved in adultery, yet who continued in her role of church leadership and would not give it up - because it wasn't really 'zui'. If it really was 'zui', the government would have created laws against it.

However the widespread use of the Union Version also means that the use of words in that translation also influences the understanding of that word in the wider culture. In a similar way the King James Version injected a slew of idioms into the English language - and even today influence the language of completely unchurched people. In the case of the Union Version's use of 'zui', this makes the work of evangelism harder because in the wider society sin is thought of as 'crime'.

Why then do people become Christians if they aren't convinced of their own sinfulness? What is it that they think Jesus is doing on the cross for them? Is he merely divine insurance in the remote case that they are found guilty of a crime? Are there two categories of Christians, and they fall into the second less serious category of respectable people who only need Jesus as a moral example? Is Jesus the answer, not so much to their massive sin problem, but their aspirations and dreams in life?

It's hard work to argue against a dearly-loved Bible translation - people become emotionally attached to a translation they have grown up with and memorised. And it's particularly hard work if doing so also places the favourite sins of people back under scrutiny and requires them to turn away from those sins. However we must teach that sin is more than crime - but also includes those things there are no laws about (such as selfishness), and even those things which only exist in our heads (such as envy), and most of all which do not give God the glory and honour he is due (such as a good life lived ignoring God).

[ PS: have a go yourself using online Chinese dictionaries such as this ]

It's important to have a biblical understanding of sin - because it impacts evangelism as well as our ongoing growth as Christians. If, for instance, we think that people are generally okay, evangelism will lack urgency, and only be about bettering ourselves. If, for instance, sin is only thought of as breaking the laws of the government, then Christians will have a false view of their personal holiness, and not feel the need to turn away from sins that aren't illegal.

What then is the Chinese view of sin? Mark Strand looks at this in an article entitled, "Explaining Sin in a Chinese Context" in the journal Missiology: An International Review 28/4 (2000). He highlights three problems confronting us as we talk about sin to Chinese people:


The second reason Strand highlights relates to Confucianism. Essentially, Confucianism denied the doctrine of original sin, and instead taught that people are essentially good, and only become evil for want of education and proper modelling. Given the right environment, people would then naturally grow into virtuous people (ren).

This wasn't crystal clear in the teaching of Confucius himself - and so there was actually debate amongst his followers, particularly Xunzi and Mengzi, about whether people are inclined towards good or evil. Mengzi insisted that humans were essentially good, and fail to achieve this by being deprived of its natural growth towards goodness. Xunzi instead taught that humans are born with natural instincts, that if not controlled, would cause bad behaviour. Even though there was that debate, Neo-Confucianism ended up siding with Mengzi and upheld the essential goodness of human nature.

You can see this is from the San Zi Jing, also known as The Three Characters Classic (read it here). This is a 13th century work, used to teach children Confucian ideals. And as such, it's a distillation of Confucian thought. Here are the very first lines of the San Zi Jing:

Men at their birth,
are naturally good.
Their natures are much the same;
their habits become widely different.
If foolishly there is no teaching,
the nature will deteriorate.
The right way in teaching,
is to attach the utmost importance
in thoroughness.

San Zi Jing I.1.

This is a very well known passage, and some older Chinese people will still be able to recite this today. However it denies the doctrine of original sin, and instead emphasises the importance of the environment - and particularly education - in determining how a child will turn out.

Strand notes that,


Thus, Chinese culture predisposes Chinese people towards things like Pelagianism and Arminianism, which to one degree or another tend to stress the essential goodness of humans and the ability of people to decide for themselves to do that which is good. If that were true, all we would need is an educator, someone who would come and teach God's ways - and we would naturally follow.

However this is not biblical Christianity. And what we must particularly affirm is that Jesus comes to the world not merely as a teacher to instruct us how to become virtuous people (like a greater Confucius). No: the climax of his work is his death and resurrection. What we need is not education, but salvation. And we must also affirm the total depravity of humanity - that all parts of our being have been damaged by the fall, and we are unable to do any real good, without the work of God's Holy Spirit inside them.

[ PS: can you think of other effects that flow if original sin is denied? ]

In the last post I showed you some data from the Department of Immigration about migration from Asian countries from 2007-08. But where have these Chinese migrants been going to live? And so today we have a slightly different perspective by focussing on the states and territories.

This first line graph shows you which states and territories migrants born in China have been going to, from the 1997-98 financial year all the way through to 2007-08.


Most migrants from China have been going to NSW, although in recent years VIC has grown quickly in popularity.

Here is a line graph showing where migrants born in Hong Kong have been going to live.


You can see from this that again NSW has always led the way, with VIC coming a close second, and then QLD. However, migration from Hong Kong has really slowed down dramatically in recent years.

Here is a table with the actual permanent settler migration figures for 2007-08 for people born in China, and also for Hong Kong.

	China	Hong Kong
NSW	5612	346
VIC	4568	264
QLD	846	125
ACT	153	8
NT	46	3
WA	612	79
TAS	62	6
SA	1060	42
Total	12959	873

We can put the data into a stacked area graphs, to show how individual states contributed to overall Australian migration. Here are the graphs for China and then Hong Kong.

The overall shape of the graph shows you how generally, migration from China has only been increasing all these years!


In contrast to the China's stacked area graph, the overall shape of Hong Kong's graph shows a dramatic fall in migration from Hong Kong since the fearful heights of 1997-98 (the British handover of Hong Kong to China).

Notice also the scale of these two graphs. While migration from Hong Kong is just under the 1000 mark and slowly declining, migration from China is at the 13000 mark - and growing fast!

[ PS: why do you think migration from China took such a significant a dip in 2001-02 and 2002-03? ]

The Department of Immigration has released migration figures for 2007-08 financial year. And here are some nice graphs built from them...

First off, a graph showing you permanent settler migration, by country of birth. Note that this is a logarithmic scale - that's because you can't see much detail for many countries, on a normal scale! And note also that the countries are arranged by region (Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Asia, South America, Africa).
No major surprises this time around - we have New Zealand coming first with 27601, then the United Kingdom with 23236. This is followed by India with 15338. And only then do we have China at 12959. Hong Kong is down from last year at 873.

That graph was pretty hard to read. So in the following three graphs for today I have just isolated countries from South-East and North Asia - which is what we're interested in for Chinese church ministry. This next graph shows you the number of people permanently settling in Australia during 2007-08 by country of birth.


Clearly, China leads the way here (12959), followed in a distant second place by the Philippines (6112) and then Malaysia (3522). The next graph is a result of comparing the 2007-08 figures with the 2006-07 figures. This shows you the change in migration levels for these countries as a percentage.


China looks like it's only grown a small amount (7.9%), but that's growth from an already large base. And this final graph for today shows you the change between 2006-07 and 2007-08 in terms of numbers of people.



In case you're interested in the actual figures, this table gives you the data the last three graphs are based on.

Country	06-07	07-08	Change (%)	Change (no's)
Brunei	35	36	2.8%	1
Burma	1629	2101	29.0%	472
Cambodia	724	710	-1.9%	-14
East Timor	23	34	47.8%	11
Indonesia	1704	1788	4.9%	84
Laos	112	83	-25.9%	-29
Malaysia	2899	3522	21.5%	623
Philippines	5561	6112	9.9%	551
Singapore	1658	1815	9.5%	157
Thailand	1989	2278	14.5%	289
Vietnam	3135	2685	-14.4%	-450
China	12009	12959	7.9%	950
Hong Kong	995	873	-12.3%	-122
Japan	811	796	-1.8%	-15
Korea	2092	2574	23.0%	482
Macau	18	15	-16.7%	-3
Mongolia	20	19	-5.0%	-1
Taiwan	671	746	11.2%	75

From all this, it's clear that China is still leading the way in terms of changing the landscape of Chinese church ministry...

[ PS: how is your church going at reaching those new migrants from China? ]

Earlier this year at a workshop I was introduced to the work of Geert Hofstede, a Dutch researcher who has done a lot of work on differences between cultures. From looking at how people in multinational companies tend to behave (IBM in particular), Hofstede found that the biggest determiner of behaviour was country of birth. And over the years he has developed a number of indices for comparing different cultures against each other.

One of these indices is the Power Distance Index - a measure of how close, or how distant a relationship superiors like to have with their subordinates, and that subordinates like to have with their superiors. My friend at Tsun-Am-I recently posted a link to a very useful website that shows you the PDI of various countries.

So a high PDI country is one where people prefer, or are used to having a large power distance between a teacher (say) and the students. These countries are Malaysia (104), China (80), Indonesia (78) and the Phillipines (94). And so the norm in such countries is for leaders to be highly respected, for people not to ask embarrasing questions, for students and subordinates to listen.

However low PDI countries are those which prefer, or are used to having a small power distance between the boss and the workers. These countries are Australia (36), New Zealand (22), Ireland (28) and the Austria (11). The norm here is for leaders to be accessible, to be at the same level as their subordinates, to be open to challenge and suggestions.

This is all about expectations, about what people are used to, what they have had modelled for them again and again during their formative years - and which they then take with them into their working life. And of course individuals will be different, but on the whole this gives you an insight into some of the conflict that can happen in a ministry training situation, or in a second-generation church.

Conflicts can happen when people who are born overseas (say Hong Kong with a PDI of 68, or Malaysia with a PDI of 104), starts to interact with those who are born or raised in Australia (with a PDI of 36). After a short while, those who are used to a higher PDI will find those who are used to a lower PDI to be disrespectful, disobedient, and to take an overy casual and relaxed approach to important things. However those who are used to a lower PDI will find those who are used to a higher PDI to be controlling, talking down to them, distant, making decisions for them without really consulting them.

One of the things that list of countries does is it immediately makes someone question the inherent rightness of their own culture. Are you really going to argue that a PDI of 68 is correct? what about 74, or 66? And are you really going to say that whole countries are wrong in their approach? Of course not. This is just our cultural preference. And what we, and in fact all cutlures need to do, is to submit our culture under the lordship of Christ. To allow our culture to be tested and transformed by the gospel - and love those from other cultures, whom God has also brought into his kingdom.

There are other differences between cultures that Hofstede has written about, which are really worth investigating for ministry (such as Individualism, with Australia at 90 and Hong Kong at 25). You can see them all from the link posted above!

[ PS: how close would you prefer your bosses / teachers to be with you? ]