There is an old Chinese Proverb, “化干戈为玉帛” which translates to, “Turning weapons of war into gifts of jade and silk”. It means turning hostility into friendship. That’s what today’s book is all about.

Hi, my name is Terence, and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today, I review “Changing Normal: Break Through Barriers to Pursuing Peace In Relationships” by Jolene Kinser—366 pages, published by Azure Seas Publishing in January 2024. The book is available for USD 17.99 on Amazon Kindle. I was given this book to review, but I am free to say whatever I want about the book, both good and bad.

She has a big heart for the Chinese community, and this book is proof of that. It is about peacemaking in the Chinese community.

There is much to learn from culture-specific ministries.

Palestinian Insiders and Chinese Outsiders

I once reviewed “Theology of Reconciliation in the Context of Church Relations” by Rula Khoury Mansour. She shared the conflict within the Palestinian Baptist Church and how some tried to address it by doing what you would expect. Having workshops, preaching the word of God, exhorting one another to live up to the Bible’s commands, and praying for one another, but all these efforts did not lead to true reconciliation. This led to her conclusion that the Bible remains true but needs to be wisely applied in its cultural context. There is a need to both study and understand the Bible and to study and understand how Palestinians think, speak and act.

I found the Palestinian church conflict fascinating. Rula revealed how the Palestinians practised sulha, where they form a jaha in order to call a hodna. It was like stepping into the world of Avatar, alien yet familiar. Rula was the insider sharing secrets with the reader.

Today’s book is a reverse of that.

Jolene Kinser was born and raised in a white middle-class American home and has come a long way from home to write about conflict and reconciliation within the Chinese community.

A lot of authors’ bios are boring, but hers are not. Every author should copy what Kinser has done. To see what I mean, go to her website, jolenekinser.com and click on “About the Author”. You will be greeted with a photo of baby Jolene Kinser and scroll through her growing-up photos as she graduates, travels, eventually obtains a PhD in Intercultural Education, and becomes a Peacemaking Specialist.

To the Western reader, what she describes about the Chinese may come across as exotic, but to me, she is writing about home, my culture, and my people.

I am the perfect reviewer for this book. I am a Christian, a Chinese and, by God’s grace, a hopeful peace-maker.

So come on, and let’s get into the book.

Structure

The book has three parts, encompassing 11 chapters.

Part 1: Looking Back to Move Forward
Part 2: The Complications
Part 3: What God Makes Possible

Kinser relies heavily on two sources: the 31 Chinese interviewees and their peacemaking experiences and the Bible as the basis for peacemaking.

Stuck

In Chapter 2, “Why We Feel Stuck,” Kinser explores the “hidden layers” that contribute to individuals’ feeling “relationally stuck.”

Kinser quotes Zhou Na:

China has a saying translated as “One will go through hell for the sake of keeping face” or “One will puff oneself up at one’s own cost”, meaning, for the sake of face, a person will commit a lot of sin, or bring a whole lot of trouble on oneself. Truly, sometimes I just can’t set face aside.

She has a whole chapter titled “Face Matters” in the book so that I will come back to this later. But I can attest that face can be a significant stumbling block to reconciliation.

Another stumbling block is the traditional Confucian way of relating to one another, which she succinctly describes in the section heading: “Superiors Forgive, Subordinates Apologise.”

Kinser quotes Li Qiang:

The older (or superior) is always right and the younger (or subordinate) needs to obey or behave in a certain way toward the older (or higher ranked). If you are above me, I am expected to respect you, and you are expected to look after me.

This is why even when an elder or superior is blatantly wrong, they refuse to apologise. It’s not normal.

And that is not all! A few pages later, Li Qiang makes another observation:

Chinese culture has moralised everything. So, someone who makes a mistake is flawed, has shortcomings, is deficient. A person who morally has not made mistakes is higher. They can then comment on and criticize, be critical of, the one who has made a mistake.

To apologise is a sign of weakness that others can exploit, so whatever you do, don’t apologise!

The more you read this, the more you understand the unique barriers to peace-making in the Chinese community. That is not to say these barriers do not appear in other cultures. Perhaps not as sharp or obvious.

This is the way Kinser responds to the culture shock:

As a white American who grew up in a Christian home, the assumption that apologising means I become inferior to the other person has been absent from my framework. So I perked up my ears and tuned in further when I realised that the Chinese people I was talking with were describing something outside of my experience. I needed to lean in further to better understand what else made apologising so difficult.

More than once, I thought Kinser employed a sensitive approach to writing about a culture other than her own. She humbly collects their voices and confidently offers a peace-making solution—a confidence not based on her own culture and experience, not even Chinese culture and experience, but on the Bible’s eternal truth and promise.

She gives us the normal everyday experiences of the Chinese, often sympathetic, never dismissive, and then urges us to listen to how they moved to a new, better, normal, God’s normal.

Let’s take one infamous Chinese trait: the need to give and save face.

Not that many days ago, I was involved in a minor conflict between two parties. The solution was easy, and that would have been it if not for the other side’s need to save face. The whole matter would have quickly escalated if we had not found a way to give face.

I thought the whole process was needlessly frustrating, so I found Kinser’s chapter on face most edifying.

Kinser writes:

Like many others, I have also viewed face as hurting and hindering, akin to pride, so I was excited when I learned that a different perspective on face is available to us. Chris Flanders presents the idea that face, in and of itself, is not bad, negative, or a hindrance. In fact, the existence of face — where face is described as one’s sense of worth, meaning, and acceptance based on our good reputation — is part of God’s plan for humanity. God instilled in the human heart the longing for acceptance and affirmation of value which are the roots of face.
Our face-problems stem from looking in the wrong places for our face-needs to be met. We constantly look to those around us to give us face or determine our face, but the only source of lasting face is God’s face, mediated to us through the face of Christ (which is intended to be experienced in Christian community in Christ as well).

Kinser goes on to present Flander’s idea. In Genesis, God always existed in a triune relationship. The Garden of Eden story can be understood in terms of face. And I read verses like Psalm 24:6,

… the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, God of Jacob.

I am shown how the Bible speaks about God shining his face on us or hiding his face from us.

Hey! It’s not only the Chinese who care about face! God relates to us with his face.

What God has established in his relationship with us is also observed in our relationships, most clearly between parents and their newborns.

Flanders’s words here remind me of how my newborn children would gaze intently at my face. At the risk of blasphemy to their newly developed eyes, I was, at that moment, the only object of their adoration.

Until I read this chapter, I had never connected the Chinese preoccupation with face with God’s face or considered how our fallen view of face could be redeemed.

Kinser describes it so well I am going to repeat it to let it sink in:

Our face-problems stem from looking in the wrong places for our face-needs to be met. We constantly look to those around us to give us face or determine our face, but the only source of lasting face is God’s face, mediated to us through the face of Christ.

Practical

Kinser could have ended this chapter with those words or something similar. But she does not aim to merely convert Chinese culture to Christian teaching; she wants to restore broken relationships.

Yes, our face is a God-given part of our lives, so let us proceed to do face care: not by putting on an iron mask to hide our wounds and blemishes but by putting on spiritual balms and exposing ourselves to God’s light.

Kinser writes:

We don’t have to beat ourselves up or hide like Adam and Eve did. Instead, we can humble ourselves, admit our nakedness, seek God’s face, be reminded of our true face from God, learn from the situation, deal with the consequences, and thank God for the opportunity to grow. We may need to regain the trust of others, but our God-given value and identity is not shaken.

The rest of the chapter is on how to live out these truths, how to live a face-safe community, where there is honesty and where sin is not ignored. There are lots of wisdom and practical tips here, but I want to zoom right to the end of the chapter to the clearest demonstration of the author’s intent for this book.

The chapter ends with a summary, prayer, and reflection questions. For some books, the end of chapter prayer is short and simple. But Kinser’s prayer is long, detailed and intimate. It is as if after you read the book, she anticipates that more than anything, you want to restore the relationship, and reading the chapter is a breakthrough, but it’s not enough; you need God. And she gives you the words to pray.

Allow me to read the first half of her prayer for this chapter.

Lord, I believe I am your beloved child and declare these truths today:

• God loves and accepts me, affirming my value.
• In all relationships, I can live out my identity in God and not live behind a fake mask.
• I can, therefore, humble myself to apologize or confess sin when I need to.
• I do not lose true face based on what others do or say to me or about me.
• I do not lose true face based on what I have said or done.
• I do not lose true face when I acknowledge to another person my mistake or sin.

She ends her prayer with thanks to God for making this transformation possible.

Missed Opportunities

I have a few criticisms of the book. But I would put them as missed opportunities, not errors.

The first missed opportunity is not pushing the reader to hear the full weight of Jesus’ warning in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

Kinser writes:

Jesus [also] makes it clear that, like the unforgiving servant, we also will experience consequences if we do not forgive from the heart (see Matt 18:21-35). To be honest, I wish Scripture was a bit clearer on what those consequences are. From my studies, I believe there is enough Scriptural evidence for me to confidently say the consequences of our struggle to forgive others is not a return to sinner status and removal from God’s family.

My critique is that Kinser could have done more to unpack Jesus’s words about consequences rather than trying to assure readers of their salvation. Let me read the last two sentences of the parable.

In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should repay all that he owed. This is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

I am here reminded of a preacher’s tip. “Preach to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”

We know God will always forgive until he doesn’t.
We know it’s never too late to repent until it is.

Kinser is quick to assure readers that our sincere struggle to forgive does not damn us to hell, but I believe in keeping with Jesus’ warning, she could do more to show that reconciliation is not just something we do to improve our day-to-day lives. Reconciliation is a divine command, underscored with eternal consequences.

This is a missed opportunity to shake people who need shaking.

The second missed opportunity is not showing us what culture change looks like.

As I read the book, I noticed something curious, which became evident in the last chapter, “Cultivating an Environment of Peace.”

This chapter has a section titled “Mindset Change Can Lead to Culture Change”. It starts with this line:

A group’s conflict culture begins to change after enough individuals personally choose to live according to God’s Kingdom-culture norms.

I noticed that for a book saturated with primary source accounts, Kinser liberally quotes experiences from husbands, wives, managers, workers, cell group leaders, and cell group members. Yet, these experiences never go beyond the individuals.

She does not give us a story of a culture change.

You might ask, “Well, what would a culture change look like?” Let me quote Alfred Poirier’s “The Peacemaking Pastor: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Church Conflict.” Poirier is making a point about the need for self-assessment in peacemaking.

Such self-assessments engender a culture of peace. A few years ago our deacons provided a great example of what it looks like for leaders to assess themselves. It began when we as elders recognised that over the years, the elders and deacons had grown apart. As elders we were blind to the way we had contributed to our estrangement from our brothers. So we called for a meeting — many meetings. But the first meeting surprised us all. The deacons came with a confession of their sin. The president of the deacons started by detailing the way the deacons had undermined their elders. This corporate confession lead to several other deacons individually confessing how they each had sinned against us elders.

That’s a great example of how peace-making is the new normal for the church.

Why doesn’t Kinser give us stories of culture change?

Is it because there isn’t any?

Is it because, culturally, the Chinese find it weird, awkward, and impossible to come together as a group to reconcile with another group?

Perhaps we will find out in her next book.

For her next book, I hope there will be a better title for it.

The third missed opportunity is in the title of the book.

If you ask someone, “What comes to mind when I say, ‘Changing Normal’? What do you think a book with that title is about?”

The answer might be, “Is it something about a new normal, the post-Covid world?” Or “Is it something about how we perceive what is normal, like mixed-race marriages used to be taboo, now it is normal? So is it a book about normalising what used to be taboo?”

Normal can mean anything. The book is really about peace and reconciliation between people. And the title should reflect that.

Why not call the book “The Art of Peace” or “The Christian’s Art of Peace”?

It’s not perfect. Some people may think it’s about art, paintings and music about peace, but some people, those who are familiar with Chinese literature, might make the connection to Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

I once read a book titled, “Thick Face, Black Heart” by Chin Ning Chu. That’s a title that Chinese people understand. What do you think of a title like “God’s Face, Pure Heart”?

You may think I am making too big a deal about the title, but as I said, this is a missed opportunity to get more people into this book. A catchier title would attract more people, which would ultimately help more people.

Who Should Read This?

As I close this book review, I am reminded of a story about cosmetics. Apparently, Chinese or Oriental skin is different from European or American skin. Cosmetic companies that are aware of this difference can develop better skin care products for targeted clients. This might be clever marketing, but I think the principle is valid.

Peacemaking approaches should be adapted to the target community. This does not mean diluting the Bible or being man-centred instead of God-centered.

If you live in and minister to Chinese communities, this is an excellent book. You will quickly confirm that she got the Chinese culture bits right and follow her lead on applying the Bible to break down Chinese walls, walls people have built up that hinder true reconciliation.

But what if the only Chinese culture you get is when you order Chinese takeaway? As I have learnt from Rula Khoury Mansour’s peace-making work among Palestinians, I can tell you that although the cultures at first glance seem alien, once you get over the initial culture shock, you get to see all of that is merely a different expression of our shared humanity.

For example, the whole thing about face is uniquely Chinese, yet the desire to be respected within the community is also common in any culture. And I think the more books we have about, let’s say, peace-making in different cultures, the more we will see how rich and potent the Word of God is. It speaks not only across time, thousands of years, but also powerfully to every nation, tribe, people, and language.

Outro

This is a Reading and Reader’s review of “Changing Normal: Break Through Barriers to Pursuing Peace in Relationships” by Jolene Kinser. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

Book List

• “Changing Normal: Break Through Barriers to Pursuing Peace in Relationships” by Jolene Kinser. Amazon.