Making people curious so they want to hear more
My language teacher has been teaching Chinese to foreigners for about ten years. She’s had many missionary students and heard lots of things from the Bible. But she seem a little surprised when I said that I wanted to learn to tell Bible stories so that I could share them with friends in the market.
After each story we discuss it, including “What questions do you have any questions about this story?” I said that I wouldn’t answer her questions. She looked a bit surprised.
“Really?”
I said, “I want to help you find the answers yourself in the story. If you find the answers yourself, they will mean a lot more to you and you’ll remember them better.” She didn’t look convinced, but what could she say?
My teacher loves the stories. Every week she says, “So are you going to tell me a story today? Have you told any stories to people in your town this week? How did it go?”
I began the Noah story. “So Adam and Eve had children, who had children and they began to fill the earth. Then God saw that inside people’s hearts was only evil all the time.” My teacher stopped me.
“You can’t say that” she said.
“What do you mean,” I said.
“Chinese people won’t understand that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chinese people believe that you can only have evil actions, not an evil heart or evil desires.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. Back in the previous story when Eve ate the fruit, where did the problem start? Was it in her actions or somewhere else?”
She thought about it for a while. “Was it in her heart? Eve saw that the fruit looked delicious and that she could get wisdom and be like God. So you mean that the problem was not just that she did the wrong thing, but that she wanted to do the wrong thing.”
“Yes – sinful actions follow on from sinful thinking or a sinful heart.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
In the end her response to the Noah story was, “So if only righteous people can be saved, what’s to be done?”
I didn’t answer her question. I said, “Keep listening. The answer is coming. It will become clearer and clearer the more stories you hear.”
Submitted by LM
