death and chinese

It started off innocuously enough. She has a Chinese oral coming up, and her Chinese sucks. I can totally empathise, so we spent some time poking fun at the idiosyncracies of the language.

Zuo and You (left and right). If you can remember how to write them, can you remember which is which?

Dong, Nan, Xi, Bei (North, South, East, West). If you gave me a compass rose I wouldn't be able to label the points in Chinese for you.

Chun, Xia, Qiu, Dong (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring). We all agree that Chun sounds like it should be summer, somehow. And isn't Xia obviously Autumn, when the leaves are falling?

We then branched out into more serious stuff, when I asked a question that has been on my mind of late: "If you were given the choice to renounce your faith or die, what would you choose?"

Awkward silence, so I continued, "It's not so totally impossible wat. Just last week the two Fox journalists in Lebanon were forced to convert to Islam or be killed. Next time you go to Bali, JI might catch you and give you the same options."

She piped up. "Just say you convert lah. Only need to sign the paper or something right? Then they will let you go." And of course, after that you could continue praying, going to church, etc. What's the big deal anyway?

So I said, "But isn't this the same choice the early Christians faced? Renounce your new religion, or be thrown to the lions. And many of them chose the lions. Or the Christians in China who also chose jail, torture and death rather than abandon their faith. Why didn't they choose this option if it is so easy?"

I guess it all boils down to what we truly, truly believe. If we know that we believe in the true God, and we are going to heaven, we should welcome any opportunity not just to proclaim our faith, but also to hasten our journey to a better place. If we truly believe, it would be a joke to renounce our faith to extend our time of suffering on earth. For surely that would be a betrayal of our principles. We would do as the early Christians did and sing hymns all the way to the end.

Easily said of course. But if it really comes down to that, I am still wondering what I would do.