The Giant Chinese Fishbowl

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University

"His neighbor comes and searches him out." Proverbs 18:17

This verse is especially true in China, where foreigners are the object of attention day and night, subjected to the unrelenting Chinese Stare. Even when we drove to Tibet, and camped out by the roadside in the middle of a 14,000' high plateau where we were sure we were alone, within minutes faces were pressed to the windows of our van.

Everything we do is common knowledge by the end of the day, and it gets to some people--like the poor paranoid American student who finally threw in the towel. He came to me and said, "Chinese are so nosy. They ask about everything I do! 'Going to work?' 'Going shopping?' 'Going home?' 'Have you eaten?' They'll probably even ask if I"m going to the bathroom!"

This, of course, is not just nosiness but how Chinese greet another. They never say 'nice weather' or 'how are you?' but ask what you're doing. And I know Dante has arranged a lower level of purgatory for me because instead of explaining this to the paranoid American, I looked about furtively, then whispered, "Do you know why they ask so many questions?" He look around furtively as well, and whispered,
"Why?"
"Because they're all Communists!" I said.
"Really?" he said.
"Yes, they are required to report on everything we do!"
His eyes widened, and I felt guilty, but I plunged on. As Martin Luther said, if you sin, sin with abandon. I said, "Next time they ask you, 'Have you eaten?', answer, and as you walk away, look back over your shoulder and you'll see them jotting it down in a little red book!"

"Really?!" The poor guy was horrified, and I said, "No, not really! That's just how Chinese greet each other! It's culture!" And I explained it to him. But I was probably the straw that broke the cultural camel's back because he hightailed it back to the anonymity of America only a month later.

But it is not just in Chinese that we, as Christians, are watched. The world, and that great cloud of witnesses, watches us--and they do so with more objectivity than we see ourselves. I don't even like to look in the mirror some mornings. It's sobering to know that the world can look beyond my face and into my heart. What do they see?

F.B. Meyer, in "Our Daily Homily," wrote about Proverbs 18:17:

"It is easy to boast of what we are or are not; but the real question is as to what others think of us. A Christian lady told me that a little time ago she went to a meeting where one after another arose to say how long they had been without sin. When an opportunity was given, she asked simply if they might be allowed to hear something from those who who lived with the persons that had been so loudly expressing themselves; because she said that she had observed that the opinions of those who shared the same room or home as Christian professors were apt to vary greatly from those of the professors themselves.

"It is a grave question for us all--what do our neighbours and associates think of us? Would they credit us with the highest attainments in Christian living? Would they concede the reality and beauty of our characters? After all, may not we be mistaking our ideals for our attainments, and judging ourselves by a lower standard than we apply to others? Might not our wives and sisters, our husbands and brothers, search us? It is so much easier to plead our own cause in a meeting than to stand clear in the searching scrutiny of the home.

"And if our neighbours search us, what does God think of us as the fierce light of his eyes scans us and reads our deepest secrets?..."