Good News for the Buddhist World

by Richard Haney, Executive Director

One morning during his recent sabbatical in Chiang Mai, my friend Todd took a short motorbike ride to study at a coffee shop. Outside one home he saw a spirit house, a small shrine common throughout Thailand where offerings are made to invoke the favor of spirits. He then saw a group of Buddhist monks blessing a new restaurant. He went a bit further and saw a Hindu “Ganesh god” (elephant head statue) guarding a neighborhood. And finally, he looked up and saw Doi Su Thep, a mountain that oversees the city. Doi Su Thep is the site of a large Buddhist temple, or wat, overlooking Chiang Mai—the most important temple in northern Thailand. Within this relatively small area were both structures representing spirits and people engaged in spiritual rituals, all seeking protection for homes, places of business, neighborhoods and the city from evil forces.

Do we have anything like this in Western Christianity? A sense that physical spaces and communities are the locus for spiritual activity? Does the unseen spirit world seem real to us? We’ve been taught to trust what we know through empirical means: touch, taste, hearing, sight—or to accept information from trusted experts who excel in measuring reality. Such phenomena as spirits, demons and unseen powers seldom, if ever, fit into our worldview.

My trip to Thailand this past spring led me to ponder such realities and their incongruence with my experience. I turned to anthropologist Paul Hiebert’s article, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle.” Hiebert explains that Westerners see God as real and cosmic and occupying the universe’s upper level, while also at work in creation on the lower, or foundational, level. But these same people (us!) tend to exclude the middle area where not only God works, but where spirits and demons are active as well.

Conversely, people in many African and Asian cultures see themselves immersed in a world of spiritual realities and conflict, whether their religion is Buddhist, animistic, Muslim, Hindu or Christian. My friend Trevor, describing an African worldview that “includes the middle,” refers to a spirits-infused world as having a “single-tiered ontology” where spiritual realities aren’t pushed aside by scientific explanations. It’s important for us to realize how people of other cultures recognize what our own cultural bias prevents us from seeing.

During my visit, I had a number of conversations with devout Thai Buddhists. Still fascinated by the concept of spirit houses, I asked someone I met about the shrines’ connection with Buddhism. He told me the shrines and the practice of offering food and fruit at them was not a Buddhist practice—but admitted he had a shrine at his home. “So Buddhism and spirit houses are not incompatible?” I asked. “Oh no,” he was quick to respond.

With a little digging, I found that spirit houses are pervasive not only in Thailand, but in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations as well. Buddhism expert Alex Smith writes in his book, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Buddhism, that Buddhism is a religion that easily adapts to other cultures, absorbing cultural elements into religious practice until it’s nearly impossible to separate the two.

A veteran mission worker shared with me that Buddhism in Thailand exists peaceably alongside the traditional practices of spirit house worship and devotion to local spirits. Many Buddhists who have studied the Buddha’s teaching recognize the challenge of reconciling both traditions. But instead of questioning this and categorizing it into an adversarial relationship, they combine the two into one stream of belief. This leads to less confrontation and allows for harmony within themselves and among family and friends—a value held in high cultural esteem.

In the missiological world, we think about healthy ways to translate Jesus into existing cultural forms—a practice called contextualization. Without contextualization, key Christian doctrines are incomprehensible to Thai Buddhists given the vast differences between worldviews.

We believe it can be harmful to ask people to give up every aspect of their culture in order to follow Jesus. Instead, a more fruitful approach is to help them understand their cultural practices informed by the new meaning the Gospel provides. We’re eager to learn from creative Christian thinkers and workers in Thailand who are re-examining methods to express the Christian message in Thai language and culture. Making reference to spirit houses as a contextual bridge to the Gospel is one new perspective being considered.

We regularly hear stories of Muslims in the Middle East encountering Isa (Jesus) and of the rapidly growing church planting movement among Hindus in northern India. We await similar narratives about Buddhists embracing the Good News of Jesus. Perhaps that day is coming soon.

God invites His people to remember the Buddhist world. The citizens of Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Laos and many more places are still waiting for a viable Christian witness that proclaims and demonstrates the love of Christ. Frontier Fellowship’s conviction is that Jesus has a distinct way of expressing Himself through every people group. As Southeast Asians gain access to the message of the Gospel, they embody a perspective of God that enriches and strengthens the faith of the global Church.

We continue to explore our part in the story, and we’re excited to find out what Good News looks like for Buddhists and how God may call us to opportunities for engagement. We hope you’ll join us in our journey to discover the beauty of Jesus and His Kingdom as it’s reflected through the peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia.