My aunt has been a devout believer for many years. She accepted Christianity 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. At that time, she had no bicycles, so she had to walk four kilometers every Sunday to attend the service in a village. 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.
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. 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 and talked with him about his journey to faith. At first, he did not believe in 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.
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. However, after some time, 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.
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.
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 no longer 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.
Without external environmental crises, the traditional Christian model can no longer meet their needs. They 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 at the turn of the millennium and today's Suzhou League 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. Whether the church can answer, 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. But today, that one sheep may be in a lush pasture, temporarily free from wolves and tigers. The problem is not how to return quickly to the flock, but how to be a sheep at all. The disappearance of external threats has revealed inner crises.
This does not mean that we no longer need community. Radical individualism is still a dead end. 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 background, and individuals are the stars on stage.
This change of model is one that the church is not yet prepared for because it will not happen within traditional churches. It 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.
Originally published by Christian Times
- Translated by Charlie Li
