Cults & Minor Religions

by Clete Hux –

Background
Media coverage of various events leading up to last summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, China, often included news of a Chinese spiritual movement known as Falun Gong. Followers of the movement anticipated the Games as an opportunity to demonstrate resistance to the Chinese government. Such resistance had been taking place for the last decade in one form or another as a protest of China’s human rights policies.

The Chinese government’s first crackdown occurred after the group’s April 25, 1999 sit-in protest at a government compound in Beijing. When more than 10,000 arrived, Communist leaders took more steps to monitor Falun Gong followers and keep their activities under control. A few months later, the government announced a ban on the practice of Falun Gong because it believed its followers promoted superstitious and evil thinking.¹ Treatment of the group by the Chinese government has been seen as inhumane and has caused quite a stir among international human rights lawyers. Some point back to what they call a similar situation in the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, Germany, when the world stood by and allowed the Games to take place in spite of common knowledge of Nazi practices. They would say history has repeated itself. Amnesty International reports that in the months leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing that there was a renewed attack on Falun Gong showing that state security was determined to crush any domestic opposition. Amnesty detailed numerous arrests and the harassment of Chinese civil rights activists. The U.S. State Department has estimated that at least 100,000 Falun Gong members have been imprisoned, locked up in psychiatric hospitals, or sent to “re-education” camps, where they are made to denounce their founder.²

Included as followers of Falun Gong are both the poor and educated, some even members of the Communist Party, all who believe that communism is destroying any hope in Chinese culture. Those who practice Falun Gong claim they are not interested in politics; they just want to practice their religion and be recognized as a legitimate religious group.

There is much more that can be said about Chinese communism and the government’s mistreatment of those seeking to exercise religious freedom. This is especially true of Falun Gong, but such abuse is only one purpose of this article. Although some have heard of the situation in China, most are not familiar with what Falun Gong really is. Identifying the beliefs and practices will be the overall objective of what follows.

Defining Falun Gong
Falun (fa meaning “law;” lun meaning “wheel”) Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was introduced publicly as a form of qigong (pronounced chee or key – gong), by its founder Li Hongzhi in 1992. One study says that qigong first appeared during the Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and has been growing in popularity ever since. Although modern in name, qigong reportedly represents forms of cultivation (personal spiritual discipline) practices from ancient Buddhist and Taoist history.³

The ancient oriental practices of qigong, being a form of Taoism, seek to combine personal discipline (morality, meditation, and breathing exercises) with attainment of spiritual energy or life force know as Qi. Such cultivation or practice is the oriental method of attaining the Buddhahood and/or the Tao, and is considered the ultimate achievement of personal self-realization. The Tao is an indigenous Chinese name for deity.⁴ One could say that this is the goal of Falun Gong’s practitioners.

Founder
There to help in this process of achieving personal self-realization or deity is the group’s founder, Li Hongzhi, born in 1951 in Changchun, Jilin, a northeastern Chinese province. He is reported to have had little or no formal education as schools were closed in his teen years during China’s Cultural Revolution. According to Li, he first began studying the spiritual disciplines of qigong at four years old from a master of the ancient tradition in the mountains of China. He continued with such masters until he developed his own version of qigong. Along the way, he supposedly supported himself as a musician, a state grain inspector, soldier, sword fighter, and martial arts master.⁵

It is significant to note that Li claims a spiritual authority greater than that of Mohammed, Buddha, and Jesus. Although it is reported that Li claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, he has said that a “supreme being” commissioned him to come to earth and save humanity from its corrupted morals and from the technological evils of science.⁶

Beliefs and Practices

Clearly a movement with spiritual practices, Falun Gong and its founder would rather the world see them as just people who love to do physical exercise. “We are ordinary members of society…. It’s only that we get up early to do our exercises.”⁷ But through such exercises the dedicated student of Falun Gong is supposedly able to achieve a state of selflessness, greater insight and awareness, inner purity, and balance. These are steps to spiritual enlightenment or “attaining the Tao.”

The very serious practitioners of Falun Gong seek to tap into the life force qi which helps move them toward enlightenment. Followers do this by cultivating the falun or “law wheel” within their bodies. This “law wheel” is believed to be a miniature replica of the universe itself, spinning in synchronization with the universe and absorbing universal energy while purging the body of its bad elements. Through cultivating one’s mind and body, Li’s disciples have access to this inner falun which is said to be located in one’s lower abdomen and psychic center of the body. Successful cultivation of mind and body bring them in line with Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance) which is said to be “the supreme nature of the universe.”⁸

The best way to accomplish all this, according to Li, is for his disciples to see him as their master who protects and cares for them. He claims that he has the power to implant the falun in his followers, eliminate their diseases, purge their spirits of the evil karma so prevalent in the world (which he sees as a dumping site for the garbage of the cosmos), and unleash their potential for a new kind of energy. Falun Gong’s claims for benefiting its followers range from reversing the aging process and being healed of chronic illness to supernormal abilities such as seeing through matter with a “third eye.”⁹

Should Christians Be Concerned?
Yes, definitely! Christians should especially be concerned because of the undiscerning spiritual appetites of our contemporaries. The influx of Eastern mysticism into Western culture for the last several decades has caused a previously Judeo-Christian civilization to grow increasingly accepting of mystical religions such as Buddhism and Taoism. These Eastern religions share a monistic (all is one) worldview, which is totally different from a theistic (Creator distinct from creation) worldview (see Gen. 1:1).

Like age-old Gnosticism which taught that secret wisdom could be attained that leads to salvation, Falun Gong teaches, as do other Eastern spiritual disciplines, that one can attain the Tao (deity) by tapping into the Qi energy via the “law wheel”. Obviously, in such a worldview, there is no place for the personal Creator God of the Bible or for the atoning work of Christ. When you have a movement whose founder expects his followers to see him as their unquestioned master, you are looking at issues of mind-control. As Christians, we know there is one master, the Lord Jesus Christ (Col. 4:1 and Acts 2:36) and He has no equals.

While Christians should reject the tyranny of communism and should sympathize with people who are oppressed, and should strive for equality, human rights, and freedom of religion, we must also recognize that all worldviews are not equally valid. We should honor human dignity, but not at the cost of truth. Our concern may best be translated into action by being prepared to intelligently articulate the truth of Christianity with gentleness and respect to those we encounter from various backgrounds. Doing that, however, requires that we have some knowledge of other belief systems, just as cross-cultural missionaries prepare when they go to another part of the world. This is the opportunity that lies before us.

Clete Hux is the Counter-cult specialist for the Apologetics Resource Center.

NOTES
¹ “China Bans Meditation Group after Massive Protest,” CNN Interactive (22 July 1999) accessed at http:// cnn.com/WPR;D/asiapcf/9907/22/china.protest.02.ap/index.html.
² Michael Sheridan, “Yu Zhon dies as China launches pre-Olympic purge of Falun Gong,” TIMESONLINE (April 20, 2008) accessed at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3779899.

³ Authors Frank Tian and Tracey Zhu paper, “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Predicaments: The Truth, Deceit, and Issues Surrounding Falun Gong,” (paper presented to the American Family Foundation Conference, Oct. 17-18, 2003.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Stephen Hutcheon, “The Man China Fears Most,” Sydney Morning Herald (May 7, 1999 ) accessed at http://www.smh.com.au/news/9905/07/text/features1.html.
⁶ David Rennie, “10,000 Cult Followers Join Demo in Beijing,” Daily Telegraph (May 7, 1999).

⁷ Stephen Hutcheon, “The Man China Fears Most.”
⁸ From the Falun Dafa web site (http://falundafa.com/intro_e.htm).
⁹ “The Power of the ‘Force,’” Newsweek, International Edition (May 10, 1999 ) accessed at http://www. newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/int/asia/ov23191.htm.

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 9 No. 3 – Eastern Religions)