In this reprint from Christianity Today, Professor Fenggang Yang explores the wisdom and shrewdness of Chinese Christians as they navigate religious repression, drawing from Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 10:16 and reflecting the cultural significance of the snake in Chinese tradition. As we mark the Year of the Snake, we hope this article encourages our Chinese brothers and sisters to persevere with resilience and discernment in challenging times. Note that this article is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
The Bible seems to give snakes a bad rap from the outset.
Scripture depicts the serpent as evil and deceptive, from tempting Adam and Eve to disobey God in Genesis to representing the Devil in Revelation (Revelation 12:9).
Yet at one point early in his ministry, Jesus portrays snakes in a positive light.
In Matthew 10:16, he tells his disciples: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
Here, Jesus is sending out his disciples to proclaim the gospel. He exhorts them to travel light: not to stock up on any gold, silver, or copper or bring along extra clothing, sandals, or a staff. He encourages them to find rest in strangers’ homes and to leave a town if no one there extends welcome.
Jesus also tells the disciples to be vigilant, as persecution and suffering will arise. Yet he assures them that they will have help in the form of the Holy Spirit, who will empower them when they are arrested and give them words to respond when they face judgment before earthly governors and kings.
In between doling out practical advice and declaring the Spirit’s ever-present nearness, Jesus issues that startling command to his disciples—and us. It’s a posture Jesus wants us to adopt in a perilous environment: that of a docile lamb surrounded by bloodthirsty beasts, displaying a crafty and cunning attitude while remaining pure and loving within.
Some may find Jesus’s saying hard to reconcile with other biblical principles, such as ridding ourselves of all malice and deceit (1 Peter 2:1). The word “shrewd” also carries a negative connotation, and adopting such a characteristic may seem
a little reprehensible for the believer who longs to be transformed into Christlikeness rather than a cold-blooded, reptilian disposition.
In place of shrewd, some Bible translations have picked words like “wary” (New English Bible), “cautious” (Good News Translation), or “wise” (English Standard Version) to more accurately convey what Jesus is saying here: We are to be discerning, attuned, and responsive to what takes place around us as we endeavor to make Christ known. The Chinese Union Version may be closest to the word’s intended meaning here: It renders shrewd as ling qiao, which means “being ingenious” and “displaying finesse.”
This Lunar New Year is the Year of the Snake. According to the Chinese zodiac, those who are born in this particular year are intelligent, intuitive, and enigmatic. Chinese culture often depicts the snake as a spiritual being with hidden power, and many folk tales and legends extol the slinky reptile for its acuity and agility.
The snake’s uncanny ability to shed its skin also commonly symbolizes renewal or rebirth, and Chinese people who overcome difficult challenges often say they have shed off a skin layer.
This is why Jesus’s statement in Matthew 10:16 may not appear as paradoxical to Chinese Christians. Instead, it is instrumental in shaping how believers in China respond to, and live under, religious oppression.
Many Christian leaders in the country leaned on this Bible verse while enduring the brutal Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when all churches were shut down and resistant leaders were imprisoned or sent to labor camps.
The remnant of Christians retreated underground. Sometimes they held prayer meetings and worship services in hideout tunnels, caves, or dense forests. More often, they met at homes in the night without turning the lights on.
I visited Wenzhou, the southeastern city known as China’s Jerusalem, in the early 2000s. A church elder and I climbed to the rooftop of a magnificent, newly built church, where he pointed to a hilly, tree-covered area about one or two miles away. His church met for worship services there at night during the Cultural Revolution. A watchman would stay at the foot of the hill, and when he spotted the police approaching, he would turn the flashlight on and jiggle it. The congregation would then disperse into the woods.
Churches like these survived and thrived under the religious ban. They adeptly navigated dangerous situations, never giving up on praising God and pleading with him for help in times of need. Whenever they deemed that the worst had passed, they resurfaced to evangelize relatives, friends, and acquaintances or minister to the sick and needy. Many within and outside China were surprised that the number of Protestant Christians increased threefold to fivefold in this period.
Many house church leaders have also clung to this verse in the reform era, which began in the late 1970s and lasted until 2012, when President Xi Jinping became the Chinese Communist Party’s general secretary. The government lifted the religious ban in 1979, and Ningbo Centennial Church was the first to reopen.
In 2016, Wang Yi of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church, who is currently imprisoned for his religious beliefs, preached a sermon on Matthew 10:16. In it, Wang shared the example of an elderly house church leader in Henan and how he embodied a snakelike shrewdness, or ling qiao, in spreading the Word.
This house church leader first shared the gospel in his village and established a church. When the authorities detained him for spreading Christianity and then released him, he left the village for the county town, where he continued to evangelize and establish churches. Again, the police detained and released him. He left the county town for the provincial capital to continue the Great Commission.
After getting arrested for the third time, he was not discouraged. Instead, he left the province for the capital city of Beijing, where he continued to build churches and expanded his church network in other parts of the country. I have heard similar stories many times during my field research.
Other leaders might have decided to remain in familiar places and continue their preaching in the surrounding areas. But house church leaders like this often adopted a different strategy: When the police came, they would dodge them by fleeing to other counties or provinces, which were under different police jurisdictions. Avoiding clashes with the authorities meant there was no hindrance to evangelism, and churches thrived in the “border regions” (bian qu) that intersected with two or three counties or provinces.
Because the house church leaders kept moving from one place to another whenever opposition to the faith arose—rather than choosing to remain and causing opportunities for greater conflict—the Holy Spirit was able to work through them to allow the gospel to grow and take root in China. This is also what Jesus says to his twelve disciples as he sends them out: “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another” (v. 23).
In many ways, the house church leaders exemplify Matthew 10:16. But they also embody another popular Chinese idiom: xu yi wei yi (虚与委蛇).
The phrase refers to yielding outwardly while remaining steadfast inwardly, and it uses the snake’s character to describe a strategy of adaptability without direct confrontation. Just as the serpent maneuvers and weaves through its environment, we can adopt an outward appearance of compliance while preserving inner principles.
This is one way Christians today are responding to suppression in China. Under religious repression, millions of believers are worshiping God clandestinely. They are accommodators who yield to the authorities outwardly while remaining steadfast in faith and evangelism.
To be clear, Matthew 10:16 is not about accommodating compromises and failures, as Wang Yi warns in his teachings. Jesus is not encouraging believers to seek personal gain or license to sin but to artfully and boldly share the good news amid the threat of oppressive forces—a threat that may sometimes mean death.
While I was in Wenzhou, I participated in some churches’ Christmas feasts. At the time, there was no need to be wily in carrying out evangelistic efforts. Christians lived public lives. Believers and nonbelievers would mingle at large events, enjoying delicious food, singing and dancing, and hearing the story of Jesus’s birth. Many churches would also organize revival meetings between Chinese New Year’s Day and the Lantern Festival.
Nowadays, it is no longer possible for churches in Wenzhou or elsewhere in China to hold such large-scale evangelistic gatherings at Christmas time. Since 2018, through the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the party-state has imposed harsh restrictions on approved churches under the clout of a Sinicization of religion policy.
The country’s revised regulations of religious affairs consider house churches illegal, and the government is actively shutting down churches, many of which have splintered into small groups to continue meeting discreetly. Dozens, if not hundreds, of house church leaders who refused to bend to the party-state have been jailed.
As we begin a new year in the Chinese calendar, Jesus’s exhortation in Matthew 10:16 is one we can contemplate and meditate on, even if we are not facing dire persecution. In what ways can we practice accommodation without compromise as we follow Jesus? How do we evangelize faithfully without inviting scrutiny from the powers that be?
While Jesus’s statement may sound contradictory, I’m reminded that wisdom, adaptability, and perseverance are essential in a world that is often hostile to our beliefs, especially for persecuted believers in China today.
Just as a snake sheds its skin to renew itself, we can continue to adapt and grow in our faith, drawing strength from the knowledge that our ultimate hope lies in Jesus’s promise that he is with us always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
Original article: All three language versions of this article are available from Christianity Today. They are available here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Image credit: feaspb via Adobe Stock, edited by ChinaSource Team.
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