I have noticed a new sign lately that I am another large step out of culture shock. I have found myself defending Thais, rather than joining in to the conversations of “why in the world do they believe…”, “it doesn’t make any sense when they….”, “why can’t they just understand…”. I think in the midst of culture shock, when much is new and foreign, we tend to believe that what confuses us just doesn’t match up to some universal logic or set of morals. And so because we don’t understand, we easily label it as foolish. But as I have come to learn about and from my Thai, Buddhist neighbors more about why they do what they do and believe what they believe, I have gained a greater respect for them and their beliefs.

Now this has not at all changed my own beliefs– about God, man and how we are to live. I think we can hold firmly to our own convictions without having to belittle the people who hold others. I will never believe Buddhism is the path to salvation, but I no longer think the people who do are stupid. As I have done more study into the religion I now realize it is far more complex than what we see on the outside. Not only that, but I’m begininning to understand more deeply how it affects Thais to believe one thing fervently since childhood, along with every known family member and ancestor, not to mention every government official and member of the country’s royalty.

Yes, Thais bow down to man-made Buddha images, and yes they know that these figures cannot hear or speak or move. They believe in a spiritual power behind these statues, not the materials themselves. They have been doing this since they were babies and their parents held their hands together for them in the Thai gesture of respect, and they watched everyone around them doing this as they grew up.

Buddhism is not simply a religion of killing off one’s desires and spending long hours in silent meditation. It actually has many honorable teachings, such as doing good rather than evil, self-restraint, refraining from greed, respecting one’s elders, seeking after wisdom.

It is true, however, that the aim of Buddhism is to attain one’s salvation by one’s own efforts, and this can never be accomplished. Buddhists need Jesus. They need the freedom of knowing that Christ’s work on the cross gave us freedom from needing to earn enough merit to get to heaven. They need Jesus’ forgiveness for the ways they have abandoned the creator God and turned to lesser gods. They need love from the Lord rather than the callous indifference of their idols. In this country of broken families, they need a Father.

But no amount of arguing or comparing Christianity to Buddhism in a simplistic way will ever get through to them. It is not that their beliefs are foolish and ours make complete sense. To them, our religion is too easy– free forgiveness from sin is ridiculous. And that God would lower himself to become man– ludicrous. To Thais, if you do good you receive good and if you do evil you receive evil. None of this free mercy or suffering of the godly that Christians believe in.

So for my neighbors, it is not a simple turning from what we often see as the obviously false to the obviously true. In our churches here, almost across the board people have come to Christ after a personal, tangible experience with God. Only when they feel that he is real and alive and longing for relationship with them does that knowledge break through the paradigm they have grown up with. Many have had dreams and visions, miraculous healing, or sensations during worship that convince them that Christianity is not a man-made religion but a relationship with a living God.

I have been doing research into Buddhism not to create a well-formed apologetic approach to presenting the Gospel to Buddhists, but to understand them better. My readings, and conviction from the Lord, has helped me to turn from my temptation to be condescending and disrespectful, if only in my thoughts, to having a deeper love and depth of understanding of my neighbors. It has also given me ways to begin conversation, to know more of what the deep longings of the Thais are and how they are trying to attain them through their religion. When I can use my intellectual understanding to be able to connect to the hearts of people here, rather than rational argument, that, I believe, is when I am best able to communicate the Gospel.

Please pray for my continued efforts to show Christ’s love through my life and my words among Buddhist slum-dwellers in Bangkok.