Editor’s Note: This article is part three of the series In Thanksgiving I Cry Out, a three-part series chronicling Zha Changping’s spiritual journey. In the previous article, the author reflected on his calling into ministry, experiences in shepherding, and growth in spiritual discernment. Here, he shares how God’s providence sustained him through scholarship, vocation, and hardship while shaping in him a deeper vision centered on Christ.
I still believe in the value of scholarship. The logical foundation of human history rests upon the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, upon the revelation of its canonical text, the Holy Scriptures, and upon Jesus Christ himself, to whom both that doctrine and revelation ultimately point.
Taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the state’s administrative institutional reforms, I quietly continued to pursue doctoral studies in Christian Thought at Renmin University of China, where I studied Classical Greek and Latin. Because my wife had been laid off and remained at home, and because my father, a farmer, had never held formal employment, I left my entire paid study stipend to my family and supported myself in Beijing through writing and translation.
One night in 2003, I only had only two-yuan worth of meal coupons in my wallet. I cried out to the Heavenly Father, praying for his provision and the presence of his providential care. At noon the following day, while returning from the cafeteria to my dormitory with my meal, I received a phone call just as I was about to enter the elevator. A woman from Shenzhen asked whether I would translate an art catalogue on Nanshan Sculpture for her. Upon returning to my dormitory, I knew that God had extended his hand of blessing to me through her. My heart was filled with immeasurable gratitude. The very next day, she wired half of the translation payment to me and also invited me, with generous remuneration, to write a critical essay for her. I did not meet this Ms. Zhang Aimin in person until 2011, when we finally gathered in the Sichuan Provincial Museum.
During those years, aside from continuing to edit and publish an annual volume of the Humanities and Art series, my primary intellectual energy gradually shifted toward New Testament studies. I came to clarify the direction of my life into five vocations: faith as my foundational enterprise; scholarship as my aspirational enterprise; criticism as my professional enterprise; teaching as my occupational enterprise; and translation as my supplementary enterprise.
By 2004, I finally completed my doctoral dissertation, The History-Logic of the New Testament, which explored the meaning of the New Testament from four perspectives: its view of language, its view of time, its view of justice, and its view of faith. Although much of its content had already appeared in academic journals, and I had already developed “the history-logic of the New Testament” as a conceptual framework, this nonetheless became the 2011 published book The Introduction to the Logic of the World-picture of the New Testament, Volume I: The History-Logic of the New Testament.
My experience of the election and grace of the Triune God—the providential care of the Heavenly Father, the guarding of the Holy Spirit, and the guidance of the Holy Son—is truly a testament to what John Newton described as Amazing Grace in his hymn: “grace appeared the hour I first believed.”
Even so, there are moments, even now, that I still feel that “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” In such vulnerabilities, it became necessary for me to enter the calling expressed in Be Thou My Vision:
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me save that thou art.
Thou my best thought by day and by night;
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true Word;
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord.
Thou my great Father, I thy dear child;
Thou in me dwelling, with thee reconciledRiches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always.
Thou and thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’ns Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
If all scholarship—including biblical studies and art criticism—does not serve the purpose of the renewal of the self, and if renewal of the self does not take the glorification of Christ’s God as its ultimate vision, how can humanity escape the torment of vanity? We can find no rest nor anchor from such vapor until we return to our Creator’s loving embrace.
Be Thou My Vision, composed by an anonymous Irish Christian between the sixth and eighth centuries, offers an ultimate answer to the futility of human existence. One author wrote as follows: “Vision without mission is only a dream. Mission without vision becomes drudgery. Vision combined with mission brings hope to the world.”
We also read in Proverbs 29:18 (ESV), “Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint but blessed is he who keeps the law.”
May we, through our union with Jesus Christ, grow ever more deeply connected with the Heavenly Father who created us. May we, in this age of intellectual barrenness, pursue the eternal life and wisdom that can only come from above.
For Christ, as scripture reminds us “is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Knowing this, “may our hearts be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ Jesus, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 1:17–18; 2:2–3 ESV
May we continue to cry out in tears of thanksgiving:
Be Thou the King of my heart; be Thou my vision.
Let nothing be desired, for the Lord alone is our hope.
