Ancestor Worship: At Home

I used to think that being a Christian, one of my duties was to maintain peace with my other non-believer family members by continuing to perform certain rituals which seemed acceptable to me.

Since Dad passed away, my family had been worshipping him by burning joss sticks twice a day: early morning and early evening. As Dad’s lifelong profession was journalist, the newspaper he had worked for was his essential mental food. My eldest brother Seng still treated Dad as if he were around by offering the paper to him before anyone else. Seng would collect the paper which had been just delivered to our house, placed it on the altar, and burned the first joss sticks. We would remove the newspaper and starting reading it ourselves only after the burn time. I think we are the only family in this world to practise this!

When I was back to my hometown on weekends, I normally took over Seng’s shift since I was an early riser. After I had made up my mind to follow Jesus, thus renounce ancestor worship, the first obstacle I had to overcome was to give up this practice. At first I simply employed the “delaying tactic”: I deliberately got up late, and stayed upstairs until I heard the motorcycle engine noise of the delivery man who had thrown the newspaper over our gate. And I patiently waited seven o’clock over to be almost sure that when I went downstairs, the joss sticks were already burning.

In the afternoon, I happened to go out quite often, so I easily missed the early evening burning of joss sticks.

Was this avoidance attitude a good solution? I doubted so.

My brother must have noticed that and he made the remark to Mum who later brought up the issue to me.

“Seng told me that lately you haven’t been keen on worshipping your father.”

I decided to tell Mom frankly I would not worship ancestors anymore.

“Anyway, that’s between you and your father, but you’d better make clarification with Seng.”

And later I also told Seng about the stand I was making for my God.

No persecution.

I thank my family members. Maybe they still think that the Chinese worship ancestors out of giving honour to our beloved who have passed away. One day, they might understand that worshipping a plank with ancestors’ names on it, is similar to idol worship, which are sinful in our Almighty God’s eyes.

"And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." (Luke 7:23 NKJV)