Remember China, Praying for China, and Our Moral Compass is a Who

Today marks the one year anniversary of the worst earthquake to hit China.I was taken by a quote from Chinese Artist AI Wei Wei on his thoughts about the anniversary, (I include his quote at the end of this post,) so I began to do a bit of reading and research and found one of the worst pieces of information I personally have seen regarding a baby, reported to be "a fetus." Read on, but know the next paragraph is graphic, and most of all tragic. Because our moral compass is a WHO and not a law nor contemporary thought as AI has inferred, we can anticipate more of this. (I am still learning how to appropriately connect my sources and adequately credit them, so please give me grace on that,and instruction if you have the know-how.)

Chinese Artist Yu, along with 40 plus avant garde Chinese artists, participated in an exhibit in Shanghai in 2000. One of the many exhibits included Yu's self-portraits entitled "Eating People" by Zhu Yu. "It consisted of a series of photographs of him cooking and eating what is alleged to be a human fetus." (Source-Wikipedia). In response to the public reaction, Mr. Yu stated, "No religion forbids cannibalism. Nor can I find any law which prevents us from eating people. I took advantage of the space between morality and the law and based my work on it". Call it censorship or common sense, the Shanghai police shut the exhibit down before its closing date.

And now for the paradox. Chinese Artist AI was one of the Curators in this particular exhibit. In an interview about censorship he says the following: (May-June 2009 interview by Simon Kirby, from Index on Censorship.) "The basic value of contemporary thought has to be established in China. We need to create a sense of right and wrong; to learn to face ourselves and our history; to discuss what kind of nation and what kind of government we should create. These are essential questions and they need to be addressed. Without this, no solution can ever really reach the real root problem. "

On this the anniversary of the 8.0 Earthquake in China, Artist AI, who maintains an effort to identify the children who were killed in the earthquake, says this:"We have to really re-evaluate the values of life in this society," he said in his studio in Caochangdi outside downtown Beijing. (This photo is a current tally of names so far.)

I see horrid inconsistencies between what Chinese artist AI Wei Wei says he values, and what he condones in his role as curator in the 2000 exhibit in Shanghai. A moral compass is not an established contemporary thought. Rather, it is the very person of Jesus Christ coming on the scene of the human heart, radically uprooting any rights we think we have, and pouring out upon and in us His very presence, transforming us into the new creation that we become through His willing sacrifice of His own sinless life. There is no more profound statement made on the value of human life than the one made by the Author of life Himself. May our own eyes be opened wider, and our hearts absolutely pierced by the sorrow of sin that led Jesus to the cross. May we utter prayers of repentance for ourselves, our carelessness, our waywardness, for China, for the human race that inhabits the world as we now know it. "Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin hath left a crimson stain, He washed me white as snow."