Do you ever think about how certain events lead to other events which lead to still other events and how if you hadn’t set the first event in motion the other events would not have happened. 

I think about this all the time. I guess I posted a few days ago about decisions and this is exactly what I’m talking about again.

Yesterday morning I went out for a haircut.  I walk out in the front of our apartment complex to a small little barber shop which is run by a lady and her teenage daughter.  It is a small little shop, but they tend to cut my hair pretty well and they only charge me 5 kuai (63 cents U.S.)  There was nothing very extraordinary about this.  I had procrastinated getting my haircut for weeks.  I was looking pretty shaggy and it felt good to lose a few pounds…

Anyway, after the haircut I decided to buy some "bags" of milk.  For some reason our "milk man", who is supposed to come to our house every other day with milk, has been m.i.a. (missing in action) for a whole week!  We’re not exactly sure why he hasn’t been coming?  I believe his cow is sick or something, but that’s just speculation.  Our only recourse is to either buy milk at the market or buy the bagged milk from the convenience store.

I decided to pick up a box of the bagged milk on my way home.  Once again, standard stuff.

When I stepped outside of the convenience store however…my standard day became suddenly non-standard.  I noticed a young Chinese guy staring at me.  Then he smiled.  I noticed this as I passed him and so I turned around to see what he found funny.  He quickly approached me and said, "Hello, how are you?"  I replied, "Hello.  Fine, how are you?"

And then he asked me if I was a Christian in Chinese.

I said ‘yes’ in Chinese and then we had a broken conversation.  I told him I was studying Chinese at the university.  He told me he was from northeastern China and that he was working here.  I started to get a bit nervous about this conversation because I wasn’t really sure why he approached me, but I wasn’t too freaked out by it.  He asked me some things I didn’t understand.  Then I thought he asked me if I thought Jesus had come to China (?)  But I wasn’t positive.  I thought perhaps he was speaking metaphorically or that he had just used a verb I was unfamiliar with.

Our conversation was not progressing too far after this point because I couldn’t understand his Chinese.  I told him that I had a friend that could speak Chinese a lot better than I and I asked if he could walk back to the apartment complex with me.  He agreed to this and so we walked around the corner.

Upon request, my friend Tomas agreed to talk with my new friend.  I told Tomas that I thought he was also a believer.  This is when the fun started…

After speaking for two minutes with this Chinese stranger, Tomas turns to me and said, "Ohhhh, this guy is with the ‘lightning group’.  The ‘lightning group’ is not the true name of the group (it’s close), but it is a cult that is prominent here in China.  Basically, the lightning group believes that Jesus has already returned as a woman who is now living in southwest China.  So, basically, I had just brought the equivalent to a Jehovah’s Witness to my friend’s front door!  What a friend I am.

My friend spoke for many minutes with this zealous young man about his belief system.  Tomas explained what we believe and how it differs from what he is claiming is truth.  The young man really wanted to "set us straight" I think, but after we both exchanged some good-natured scriptural spars it seemed obvious to me that we were just going to be spinning our wheels.  (After all, one of the lightning groups foundational passages is a misinterpretation of the verses in Matthew 12 where Jesus is talking about Jonah and the Queen of Sheba going to Solomon.)  Of course during this whole conversation I wasn’t saying anything.   I could piece together a little bit.  I did show Tomas and this young man the scriptures in Thessalonians that talk about how the dead will be raised to life when Jesus returns.  The lightning guy didn’t have much response to this verse, but at that point things were winding down already anyway. 

Finally, we just had to agree to disagree and go about our business.  I found the encounter very interesting in that we all want Jesus to be like us and we devote a lot of energy to making him fit our image.  The Chinese aren’t the only ones who are making this mistake.  Just take a look at the artistic representations of Christ over the centuries (and even today).  Jesus typically takes on the attributes of the culture portraying him–the Anglo-Jesus.  And that’s just physical attributes.  Our culture also interprets scripture and theology through its own lenses as well. 

And yet the true Christ constantly transcends culture and overturns the power structures that exist.  His kingdom is unique.  We want Christ to be like us, but His desire is for us to be more like Him.

These were some of the thoughts I had afterwards.  The other was: if I hadn’t got my haircut today none of this strangeness would have happened.  Christa’s good point was that at least during those fifteen or twenty minutes we were talking to him this somewhat mislead individual wasn’t out there spreading potentially harmful propoganda to people who don’t know any better!