A Chinese government publication has Jesus spouting human maxims that come straight from the playbook of the Chinese Communist Party.
Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China, reports the government’s Tian Feng publication is comparing the Bible to “The Maxims of Master Zhu.”
“For example, the Confucian saying ‘There is nothing more shameful than being jealous of the wealth and power of others; there is nothing lowlier than looking down on poor people’ corresponds to ‘He who despises his neighbor sins, but happy is he who is gracious to the poor.’ (Proverbs 14:21),” the report says.
“In another comparison, ‘You mustn’t contest a lawsuit in your family life, as doing so will lead to an adverse outcome. You mustn’t talk too much when conducting yourself in society, as talking too much will lead to mistakes’ is likened to ‘Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?’ (1 Corinthians 6:7).”
A Christian house church leader told Bitter Winter the Communist Party is “replacing the words of God with human moral standards, secretly distorting the doctrine and eroding the foundations of the Christian faith.”
“This is a truly sinister approach. Only the devil would do such a thing,” the leader said.
In China, the government controls churches by requiring them to belong to its Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
The Tien Fang “has always been a good indicator of the state of ‘official’ Christianity in China,” the report said.
For a number of years, the communists allowed the Bible to be printed in China and distributed through stores. Now, Christians holding their own church services frequently are harassed, arrested, imprisoned and penalized.
“The regime has banned the sales of the Bible online since March last year, removing it from shelves in brick-and-mortar stores even earlier. The Bible is also being re-edited and annotated by including chapters from Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist classics, as part of the government’s work plan to promote Christianity with Chinese characteristics through ‘thought reform.’ The ‘sinicization’ of Christianity is also stimulated through other activities, such as comparative readings of the Confucian Analects and the Bible,” Bitter Winter reported.
The Tian Feng publication this year has has featured covers using a “sinicized” Jesus.
“For example, Jesus was depicted wearing traditional Han attire, Mary was personified as an ancient Chinese woman, and the poor who were fed by Jesus during the ‘miracle of the five loaves and two fishes’ are portrayed with their hair tied in traditional Chinese buns. The October issue was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Communist China, so biblical illustrations were replaced by patriotic slogans and images. This shows that the whole exercise is governed by ideology and goes well beyond the iconographic ‘inculturation’ traditionally practiced by Catholic and some other missionaries,” the report said.
“This is like killing someone with an invisible knife,” a preacher from the northwestern province of Shaanxi told Bitter Winter.
“During the Cultural Revolution, if you believed in Jesus, the Communist Party would arrest you and kill you in the open. Now, the regime is gradually distorting the Christian doctrine in secret.”
The report quoted a senior citizen Christian from the province of Qinghai, “The CCP has always talked about de-Westernization; it doesn’t allow Chinese people to believe in the God of foreigners, but I never expected that the Lord Jesus and saints through the ages would be transformed into Chinese people. The CCP has gone totally crazy!”
