Nanjing International Christian Fellowship - Nanjing, China - April 15th, 2012

Today was my first day visiting a Christian community in China and my first Christian faith visit this year. What an experience it was.

I went with my friend that I made here in China recently who is a Christian and together we went to go check it out.

The Nanjing International Christian Fellowship (NICF) services take place on the 5th floor of a hotel. The room is quite big with many white seats. The stage is red with lights with NICF in white letters. To the right and left of the stage where the band is set up (surrounded greenery) there are two projectors. You need a foreign passport to attend due to regulations by the local government.

The congregation was extremely diverse. With people from all over Africa (including the lead singer and the reverend), the UK (another singer), America, Singapore and many other areas.

The service began like many an evangelical service I've attended in the States. It had the Christian rock feel was concert-like. The songs that were played were "We Gather to Worship" (the main opening worship hymn I've heard at modern evangelical churches) and "Trust and Obey" which kind of rubbed me the wrong way...but that's to be expected given my agnosticism I tend to have.

After that the Reverend spoke on his sermon about faithfulness. He said that by being obedient to God we are rewarded but faithfulness is needed too. He was funny in some of the comments he made:

"God is wants us to be diamonds for faithful people are rare and like diamonds. Most stores don't actually sell real diamonds, it's glass. So husbands by your wife a gold ring."

"In the old days men used to pay a bridal fee, so there wife had to be obedient cause they owned her. It is not that way nowadays so much (implying it's a good things it's changed). But God owns us."

These were some of his humorous if at time off color comments. He was good at quoting scripture and was a pretty classy guy (he was dressed in a suit). Besides the things I've written about before on how my own morals differ from Conservative Christianity, I do think he had some good points, especially on how faithfulness in friends and others should be valued. He was also big on forgiveness (he mentioned a preacher caught with a prostitute who came back...I wondered if he would feel the same about anyone else though who wasn't coming form a place of power and had made a mistake).

Because of this I felt much more connected talking to my friend afterword about the service and religion as a whole. She made me realize how much I still wrestle with it in having belief or no and I realized I may be doing that for the rest of my life (which I don't mind...I usually discover so much and it does mean I might find the truth eventually too).

The music wasn't really my thing since I find reflective music like chants or hymns are where I feel the most aware of how far I've come and still have to go. Celebration music has it's place...but when I'm thinking about God in that sort of environment, it tends to make me sort of disconnected since in the jubilation short term gratification through joy can takeover the mind versus the wholeness of what it means to be human, flawed and hopefully growing that can come from a more quite traditional environment...where things are allowed to the surface and with it the choice of what to do with it next.

Xuanmiao Guan - Suzhou, China - April 1st, 2012

This entry was hard to write. I've never been at a place where I've felt such a mixture of emotions (except perhaps when I visited the Vatican). I think the best way to tackle it is how I first met the Temple.

At the gate there is a building that was part of the Temple complex but now serves as a high end place for people to buy gold (blessed by Taoist monks, yep). Outside the Temple gates (and within I would soon learn) are shops and more shops. Clothes, high end tea, figurines and even things with naked women on them that look like they came out of a trailer park. These shops and more surround the Temple and are spread throughout the Temple grounds.

Once we passed through the gate we were greeted by a swarm of shoppers who were visiting the different craftsmen and sellers that covered the grounds of the sides of the Temple. Wanting to get out of the noise and feeling of emptiness I made for the main building of the Temple which was separated by a small gate.

Once inside I was greeted by a throng of people who sat watching a Taoist service taking place. The music was peaceful, the chanting was order to the chaos outside. Inside the Temple three Golden Immortals rose up where offerings were placed. The monks were dressed in colorful robes and around was a guardian for each birth year on the Chinese Zodiac.

The people were mid-age (a few 20ish) but mostly older married couples. You could see that they were experiencing something in the ritual and peace that the main hall brought. Even as a tourist site, it hadn't completely gone to the dogs. It was still an active temple and for all the people there it meant something.

Of the things that stood out in the main hall, there was a one horned bull that was rubbed on the head and snout for luck, an immortal who was most likely Guan Yin of Buddhist lore who was in three corners of the Temple. There also was a bridge placed in the middle of the hall painted black and gold.

After we crossed through to the back we found a hall with tacky lights around a God or Immortal of War, the room was nearly empty, and then in the main hall the three Gods of Long life. We crossed through the hall and ended up back with the shops. The shops were impossible to get away from, except in the Temple rooms.

The last thing we saw were the God of Literature. The fact that one exists made me smile a bit inside. It's nice to know that something like that has been admired for thousands of years. It was outside this temple where in the shop that was selling Gods, porn on plates and stuff was also being sold.

This place made me feel peace and want to wretch. Peace because of the people there worshiping and the times I myself prayed and other wretch because of how close money as God was present...it was hard to tell where the good of religion and worship of money began as they overlapped in a messed up ball of humanity...