My aunt has been a devout believer for many years. She accepted Christ due to her illness. Around the early 1980s, she suffered from a persistent toothache and tried many anti-inflammatory drugs, but none worked. There were no dentists in her town, but only barefoot doctors to ask for medicine.
The toothache tormented her so badly that she could not sleep. By chance, she came to believe in Jesus and joined a church. My aunt said that after believing in Jesus, the bad tooth eventually fell out, and the pain stopped. She believed it was God's grace. She often shares this story as a testimony. At that time, she had no bicycle, so she had to walk four kilometers every Sunday to attend the service in a village.
My eldest sister believed in Jesus because of recurring health issues. In our folk belief, people would say she was an easy target of unclean spirits. Before she became a Christian, she frequently visited a shaman in a neighboring village for healing.
Jesus had great power, could give her peace, and protect her from evil spirits.
One of her neighbors became a Christian and told her that Jesus had great power, could give her peace, and protect her from evil spirits. After she believed in Jesus and joined the church's folk-dance team, her health improved.
I once met a Christian from northern Anhui Province (West of Shanghai) and talked with him about his journey to faith. At first, he did not believe the gospel and thought it was only a story. In the 1990s, he left home with his fellow villagers to work in a factory. He felt intensely homesick because it was the first time that he had left home.
Then, a fellow villager invited him to a church. The church leader was from a place near his hometown and had the same accent, lifestyle, and food preferences. Many of the church members were from nearby villages. He immediately felt at home. This led him to join the church. Gradually, his resistance to Christianity faded. Eventually, he became a devout believer.
Gospel relevance for different needs
He excelled in academics but did not understand the meaning of studying or life itself.
However, another friend of mine is a very different story. He was born at the end of the 1990s. Raised in a well-to-do family, he had no shortage of expensive, smart electronic gadgets. He performed well academically at school and got into a prestigious southern university, majoring in the popular field of electronic engineering. But because his parents had been strict with him since childhood, especially in his studies, he only ever read textbooks and had no other hobbies. This made him a struggling person: he excelled in academics but did not understand the meaning of studying or life itself.
His university and major were both top-tier, but neither was what he truly liked. After graduation, he did not return to the northern city where his parents wanted him to go. Instead, he chose to stay in a southern city far away from them.
Because his major had strong job prospects, he earned a good income. However, working in electronic engineering meant frequent overtime. If clients needed help, he would have to get up in the middle of the night to deal with it.
Even though he had his own living space and financial independence, he was still anxious about the meaning of life. He felt that life had no joy, nothing worth fighting for, or making him happy. A sense of emptiness often crept up on him at night. He thought about religion and explored Buddhist and Taoist spiritual communities before trying a Christian church. It wasn't long, however, before he quit.
He explained that religious groups often share a common trait: a set of rules and regulations. This reminded him of the strict discipline his parents imposed on him during his school years. It was something he found hard to accept. He had come to church in search of meaning because of a sense of existential emptiness and loneliness, but he did not find what he was looking for.
At work, he had to deal with his clients and employer. At church, he also had to deal with the leaders. He could not discuss topics that interested him, and rarely heard discussions that addressed his concerns. Often, the message he received was that all his problems were his own fault, but no answers on how to solve them.
He was not sick or mentally ill, but the church always treated him like such a patient.
For instance, the feeling of meaninglessness in life was said to be due to not knowing God or Jesus. But what is God? What is Jesus? These things, he was told, could only be understood after believing. He felt trapped in a circular argument. He was not sick or mentally ill, but the church always treated him like such a patient.
Applying the gospel to new realities
From the examples above, one issue becomes clear. It is not that Christianity has changed, but that people have changed. The revival of Christianity in the 1980s and 1990s was built around a model of responding to suffering. The model operated in an environment of poverty and material scarcity, where people could not cope with hardship. Therefore, messages about miracles and healing were highly appealing.
Moreover, in the face of overwhelming suffering, fragile individuals could only find protection by belonging to a group. Thus, submission to a church became the norm. In this traditional practice, the church was greater than the individual. It shaped a healing-focused, patriarchal model of church governance. Whether the suffering was material, physical, or anxiety, the model met the real-life needs of believers by offering ready-made lifestyles and reducing individuals' sense of vulnerability through community, providing comfort and a sense of safety.
However, today, the generation suited to that traditional model is aging, and Christianity's development has hit a bottleneck because that paradigm no longer meets the needs of the new era.
The generation born since the 1990s has grown up in urbanized environments. This means crises like illness and poverty are not usually the norm during their upbringing. Urban freedom means they no longer need to rely on traditional kinship-based communities for access to resources. Today, a single individual can live quite well in a city on their own.
These ones are searching for meaning in life, personal value, and goals worth pursuing.
Without the pressure of poverty and physical crises, the traditional Christian model no longer meets the needs of well educated, upwardly mobile urbanites. These ones are searching for meaning in life, personal value, and goals worth pursuing, things the traditional church model cannot provide at all.
Two noteworthy developments in the past twenty years highlight the change in the times: the "Super Girl" talent show (超女海选) at the turn of the millennium and today's "Suzhou League" (苏超’足球) football fan culture. Both are grassroots celebrations of individual joy, signaling the exit of grand narratives.
If in the Super Girl era, grand narratives were still standing tall, then in the Suzhou League era, they have voluntarily stepped down. This is an age where the individual steps onto the historical stage. It is an age that asks, "How can I become a better me?" When grand narratives no longer serve as the backdrop for self-definition, the question of how an individual can better become themselves arises.
This is not only the problem existentialism raised in the 20th century. It is also the problem we face today. Yet existentialism posed the question without offering an answer. If the church can answer at all, it may first require a new kind of church.
Take Jesus' parable of the ninety-nine sheep and the one lost sheep. In the past, emphasis was placed on the lost sheep's danger and vulnerability. It needed the shepherd to find it and bring it back to the flock for safety.
The problem is not how to return quickly to the flock, but how to actually be a sheep.
But today, that one sheep may already be in a lush pasture, temporarily free from wolves and tigers. There's not even an assumption of being a sheep and needing a flock. So, the problem is not how to return quickly to the flock, but how to actually be a sheep. With the removal of external threats personal inner crises are exposed.
This does not mean that we no longer need community. Radical individualism is still a dead end. But, nowadays, individuals no longer need the community to define their value. Communities no longer function like parents assigning worth to individuals. Instead, communities are now the dim or blurred background, and individuals are the focus and stars on stage.
This change of model is one that the church is not yet prepared for. Traditional churches, entrenched in a model that was good for a different context, are unlikely to change. A more relevant type of church needs to, and will, arise anew among the younger generation. For in every era and circumstance, people still need meaning. That meaning must come from beyond life, from beyond this world. This is the challenge of Christianity. It is also its crisis. All we can do is pray for God's guidance and be prepared to change.
Originally published by 基督时报 (Christian Times) and translated for China Christian Daily by Charlie Li. It was republished by ChinaSource and published here again with permission.
李道南 (Li Daonan) is a regular writer for the Chinese news service, 基督时报 (Christian Times), which covers both current events and faith‑related perspectives for a Chinese speaking audience. Li has a master's degree in Western philosophy and his writing focuses on how urbanization impacts traditional society as well as the role and function of Christianity amid social transformations, from the perspective of religious sociology.
