Doctor Chen
I had a professor in college at Cal State University who had recently become a Christian when I met him. Dr. Chen emigrated from China, and when he moved to LA he was shared the Gospel for the first time. I asked him what it was that compelled him to follow Jesus. Dr. Chen explained to me that he grew up under Communist China’s authority where you could never question anything – even when things didn’t make sense to him, he was forbidden to ask simple questions, and even think for himself. Dr. Chen grew up having no authority outside the government, and it was absolutely unshakable.
Dr. Chen was blown away when the Gospel was shared to him, and he saw something in Jesus he’d never seen in any other person in history – he saw someone who was 100% committed to truth, and yet not an unshakable government authority. Jesus, he saw, is the perfect example of how we should live: totally committed to truth (he did believe in Truth), and yet graceful and loving to one another.
Dr. Chen explained to me a few verses that really stood out to him, and these verses in Ephesians were among them. Even growing up as a Zen, Dr. Chen knew that there was a “perfect state of man” (he just was under the assumption that it was attained through a different means). And so, when Paul says that we must STAND FIRM IN TRUTH and BE RIGHTEOUS, Dr. Chen was moved to seek out this Jesus who completes that for us. Being righteous, as Paul speaks of, means that we are in the state that is acceptable to God – in integrity, virtue, purity of life, rightness, correctness of thinking, feeling, and acting. Dr. Chen became a Christian because he saw for the first time people who stood firm in what they believed, he saw the evidence of that through their fruit, and understood that it is only through Christ can we really attain righteousness.
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