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BY REV. BEN JOHNSON •
hina’s Communist government has given the world another example of how socialism is incompatible with Christianity, literally chapter and verse. A Chinese textbook teaches students that Jesus Christ stoned a woman to death while admitting that He is a sinner. China’s besieged Christian population says the government has twisted the Gospel in an effort to convince young people to obey edicts handed down by the Chinese Communist Party.
The offending passage appears in a textbook intended to teach law and ethics to students in secondary vocational schools. It reads like a familiar paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John 8:3–11, up to a point: Religious leaders catch a woman in the act of adultery and bring her to Jesus, asking what should be done with her. He responds that anyone without sin may cast the first stone. But then the text takes a dark and jarring turn.
According to a translation posted by Annie Geng in Harper’s magazine, the Chinese version of the story concludes: “When the crowd retreated, Jesus raised a stone and killed the woman, and said, ‘I am also a sinner, but if the law can only be executed by a spotless person, then the law will die.’”
The ahistorical embellishment that Jesus Christ stoned a woman to death is visceral and striking. The depiction of the Prince of Peace as an avenging angel of administration has more in common with the Muslim ahadith than the New Testament. Yet it served the purposes of Chinese Communist Party, which apparently plagiarized this counterfeit, “other Gospel” from a story by Orson Scott Card and passed it off as Scripture in order to whitewash its own guilt.
“As told to Chinese students, the story teaches that the law and the Party are good and pure, and transcend the impure human beings who happen to represent them. Even if the officers are corrupted, their decision should be accepted – because, honest or corrupted, they represent the Party, and the Party’s law should never be questioned,” explained Bitter Winter magazine.
The Communists’ revision teaches that even disreputable or dishonorable people may mete out punishment. This discipline may encompass everything up to and including the death penalty. And even Jesus Christ Himself endorses their actions.
Of greatest eternal importance, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ led a sinless life before dying for the sins of the human race on the Cross. In the same chapter of the Bible, Jesus asks, “Which one of you convicts me of sin?” The Apostle Peter wrote that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”
This alteration of the fourth Gospel represents another facet of the Chinese government’s “sinicization” of religion, which would force priests and pastors to interpret “religious thought, doctrines, and teachings in a way that conforms with” the CCP’s party line. To this end, Chinese Communist officials have oppressed true Christian leaders, replaced the Ten Commandments with posters containing socialist propaganda, erased the First Commandment to “have no other gods,” and ordered believers to remove pictures of Jesus from their living rooms or lose the government pension that keeps them alive.
The latest, government-sponsored sacrilege – which was first reported by UCA News in September – teaches three lessons.
First, secular government inevitably seeks to subordinate the church to its own aims. This is true, whether the leader is King Henry II, Peter the Great, or Josef Stalin. Whenever the church and state form an organizational unity, the government will always wield greater earthly strength.
Second, all partisans may find themselves tempted to distort Jesus’ message – albeit rarely as openly as in this case. Every attempt to leverage Jesus’ authority in a matter not addressed by Scripture risks altering His message for our own private aims. And as quickly as political arguments dissolve personal relationships, deifying politics deforms our Lord into a cosmic bully raining down death, rather than grace, on our enemies.
The cognitive dissonance produced when a Christian reads the Chinese text drives this point home. The authentic Gospel pericope contains one of the most evocative stories of God’s grace. According to St. Augustine of Hippo, the woman actually “expected to be punished by [Jesus] in Whom sin could not be found.” There was no question of her guilt or Jesus’ innocence. Instead, “He, Who had driven back her adversaries with the tongue of justice, rais[ed] the eyes of clemency towards her” and told her to “go, and sin no more.” By doing this, Jesus “condemned sins, not man.” It tears at the heart to see such this divine message of forgiveness and redemption turned into a petition for capital punishment and blind obedience.
Third, Christian silence enables this kind of distortion and persecution. “We hope that Church authorities will come forward and speak up for the Church,” an Asian Catholic named Kama told UCA News. Thus far, her hopes have been misplaced.
“We can no more freely announce the Gospel values” in Hong Kong, said retired Cardinal Joseph Zen. He said his successor, Cardinal John Tong Hon, had been told to quietly acquiesce to Chinese directives “by Vatican authorities.” Aside from this retired prelate, the Roman Catholic Church has greeted China’s months of provocation and suppression with silence.
Indeed, silence would be an improvement on Vatican figures’ statements about Beijing. Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, declared last February that “right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”
If Pope Francis won’t speak out against the unjust imprisonment of Jimmy Lai, could he bring himself to denounce the Chinese Communist Party’s portrayal of our Savior as a murderous party apparatchik? Might he at least rein in Sorondo’s extravagant and demonstrably false praise? A pontiff who has declared all applications of the death penalty “inadmissible” might condemn the presentation of a bloodthirsty Jesus in Chinese schools on those grounds alone.
The time has come for a Christian leader to use his global exposure and moral authority to repeat the words of the Apostle Peter, that there must come a time when “we ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:28-29).
Source: https://blog.acton.org
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Dhara, I don’t feel people worship the Bible, it seems they worship the churches leaders. The Catholics really don’t read the Bible & any religion that does seems to have their attendees read what allows them to keep them under the spell of control, & also to give tithing. As far as humans having sex with animals, that produced Neanderthals that were destroyed in the flood. I feel the Bible could be making reference to Gods seed mixing. I’ve known many of farmers in my life & would never accuse them of such practices, besides wouldn’t we see a lot of people with tails?? Dhara, This Oct. 2019 date, where can I find this event?
I was not aware of the practice of having sex with animals until I was given that knowledge by more than one farmer’s wives. That doesn’t mean they all do. As for creating tails, even in the bible it states that the God/dess made it impossible for the transfer of DNA from humans to animals, etc. otherwise there would be tails. Of course, today, technology is changing all of that.
And unfortunately, the practice of having sex with animals is being encouraged. I was standing in line one day waiting to check out when a young man – about 20 – declared loud enough for everyone to hear: “Because we are part animal, it is okay to have sex with other men and animals too.” What he does with his body is his business, but I would not want to be his sexual dumping grounds for the filth he will pick up – the role far too many males place upon women in serve to them.
Dhara, You evaded the Oct. 2019 question. Don’t know where you live but I hope in your beliefs about farmers makes you a vegetarian. I do agree with you we are living in a society, from multiculturalism, has weakened ethics & morals & culture of ‘a People’, that in turn it’s inhabitants have become spiritually ugly.
ALL Religion is Made Up! ALL.
Originally based upon truth, religions are changed to serve the agenda of the dark forces. Because they hate the power intelligent and beautiful women have over them, male religions are designed to suppress women. Why people continue to read and worship the bible is beyond me because it is keeping them from hearing their own I AM Selves guidance. Centuries of being told that it was woman who created the fall in consciousness continues to enslave many, in spite of the fact that it was probably males who had sex with the animals, creating the half-human-half animal creatures that were destroyed in the Flood who brought about The Fall. A practice, by the way that continues today, especially in many farming communities.
Catholic Church and all male religions have changed to justify their arrogance and power over others (an original sin they continue to live by).
I don’t remember where I read it, but I have read that Jesus killed someone when he was a young man when he learning to master his energies, which is what we are here to do too and the reason the dark forces hate humanity – but especially women – because we are created with power that has been suppressed by the dark forces for centuries. Accessing and mastering that powerful energy is a continual threat to the dark forces because the dark forces are today powerless. Their own I AM Presence have given up on them – too much ego-based choices and karma to ever pay off. So, in Oct. 2019, the God/dess placed a ‘ring of pass not’ around them, blocking and removing the same power we are all created with. The dark forces for centuries have used their energy/power to feed their ambitions and egos. Instead of choosing to master themselves, they have used the single-energy male energies (weapon between their legs) to enslave, not love.
By the way, for centuries, rape was not against the law until Alexander the Great made it so and placed intelligent women in places of power. Angered, the male religions of that time ended up killing the women.