Stories From the Field

Discovering the unseen barriers to the Cross!

November 14, 2007 on 2:34 am | In Taxi | No Comments

Last week, in my series on Christ Over a Cup of Coffee, at Grace Baptist Church, Singapore, I talked  about how to uncover real barriers to the gospel. Little did I know that the following day, I would have an opportunity to practice those very principles.
 
It came about because I needed to catch a cab to a planned meeting. The only problem was that when I got to my destination, I discovered that I had the right day of the week and the right time, but unfortunately the wrong week! Needless to say it was a discouraging realization. Yet somehow God always seems to convert our disappointments into His Divine appointments. That day was no exception.
 
After I had reached my destination and had discovered “my error,” I got into a cab to return home. After making small talk with the taxi driver for several minutes and talking about the Hindu holiday (Deepavali) that was upon us, I saw an opening to ask him about his spiritual background and preferences. He replied to me that he was a Buddhist. However, there was something in his tone that seemed to indicate there was something else going on with him below the surface that was not clear in his answer. In asking him to clarify what he meant by Buddhist, this in turn opened a door for me to share with him about my wife’s family’s religious perspective (A mixture of Buddhism and Taoism). This in turned opened the door for me to share my thoughts about how many Singaporeans don’t really seem to worship their selected gods because they really believe in those gods, but more so because they are afraid that if they don’t continue the practice something bad might happen to them. To my surprise, he said, “yes sir that is right” to my statement. I further asked him what he thought about all those Singaporeans who claim to be devoted Buddhist yet they also seem to want to get in line for their lottery ticket as well, to which he laughed. After saying all these things and realizing he too saw a problem in how many people in Singapore practiced their “Buddhism,” it made me more curious why he still considered himself a Buddhist. I also wanted to find out if he thought that one religion was no better than another. 
 
So I probed a little further. I asked him if he knew anything about Christianity and told him that I was a Christian. He said he went to a Catholic school as a child and even considered being a priest. This caused me to probe further and to make a long story short I found out that he was the only son in his family and though his three sisters had become Christians, he could not make the same decision because he believed that he had to hold the joss stick for his dead relatives. I could see he was really distraught and that part of him did desire to commit his life to Jesus Christ.
 
We had now reached my destination but I told him that I would be praying for him and gave him my business card and encouraged him to contact me if he wished to talk further. Then I asked him to consider this perspective. I asked him, “If his dead relatives knew what he knew about who Jesus is, wouldn’t they too advise him to make a commitment to Christ?” I sensed that no one had ever asked him a question like this and that the question did have some impact.
 
I know that in Singapore this is a big barrier for many Chinese to embracing Christ, but because of this encounter, I now understand more clearly the agony that some Chinese go through because the joss stick is so tied to filial piety and respect for dead relatives. I know that if these barriers were removed, his heart would certainly be more open to consider the Gospel. Certainly it was a reminder to me of how important it is to remove the obstacles of our pre-believing friends in our efforts to help them take a step closer to Christ each day (1 Cor. 3:6). It was also an important reminder to always look for what is below the surface in our conversations with our pre-believing friends to discover the unseen barriers to the Cross!