By Yang Chen, China

In June 2023, I was supposed to leave home to do my duty due to the needs of the gospel work. Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to come back for a while, I thought I’d go home, let my parents know, and pick up some clothes in the process. When I arrived, I saw my mom with a tube inserted in her arm and looking quite pallid. I asked her what was wrong with her, and she said it was nothing big and would get better with a small surgery. But it seemed like something more serious, so I asked to see her medical records. The records noted she had three kinds of malignant tumors. I was shocked, my mother had cancer! These were malignant tumors—could she really recover? What if the treatment didn’t work? My father said to me, “Your mother is undergoing chemotherapy now and the success of her treatment will depend on how the chemotherapy goes.” I knew that this was all with God’s permission and I couldn’t complain, so I prayed to God to protect my heart. My dad then proceeded to tell me how when my mother was sick in the hospital, my little brother had been there to care for her and had even taken on another job to make money for my mom’s medical bills. I was quite upset after hearing that. I was the eldest child in the family, and I should have been the one handling all this, but instead I was unable to offer any help at all. Would my parents think I lacked conscience, was unfilial and that they had raised me for nothing? My mother comforted me, saying, “Don’t you worry and don’t be afraid. How long we live is all up to God. Just focus on what you need to do, and don’t worry about me.” Hearing my mom say that, I really wanted to stay behind and take care of her, but there was so much work to do in the church and I knew I couldn’t stay at home for much longer. Seeing my mom like that, I just couldn’t get myself to say I planned to go do my duty away from home, so I ultimately just left in a rush without saying anything.

On the road, all I could think about was my mom sick at the hospital with no one to take care of her and my little brother working hard to pay for my mom’s medical bills. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. I felt that as her daughter, I should be there to take care of her when she was sick, but not only was I not able to take care of her, I wasn’t able to help at all. If other people heard about this, what would they say about me? Would they say I lacked a conscience and was ungrateful? Would my little brother complain about me? The more I thought, the worse I felt, and I totally lost the resolve to leave home and do my duty. In my heart, I said to God, “Oh God, I cannot leave home to do my duty. My mother has cancer, and if I leave now, I might never get to see her again! I’ll just do my duty here, that way I can go see my mom when I have free time.” After that, I still did my duty, but I couldn’t quiet my mind. I kept thinking, “How is my mom doing now?” I wanted to find time to go home and see her. I knew my state was off, so I looked for words of God to read. I found this passage: “In every period and at every stage, some particular things happen in the church that are at odds with people’s notions. For example, some people get sick, leaders and workers get dismissed, some people are revealed and eliminated, some face the test of life and death, some churches even have evil people and antichrists who cause disturbances, and so on. These things happen from time to time, but they are by no means accidental. All of these things are the result of God’s sovereignty and arrangements. A very peaceful period may suddenly be interrupted by several incidents or unusual events, which happen either around you, or to you personally, and the occurrence of these things breaks the normal order and normality of people’s lives. From the outside, these things don’t conform to people’s notions and imaginings, they are things that people don’t want to happen to them or to witness. So does the occurrence of these things benefit people? … Nothing happens by chance; God exercises sovereignty over and permits the occurrence of everything. Although people can understand and accept this on a doctrinal level, when a specific event befalls them, they don’t know if it is something that God is exercising sovereignty over or has permitted, and they don’t know how to accept it from God or how to submit to His sovereignty and arrangements. Is this not a practical problem? Herein lie the truths people should seek and the truth principles they should understand. If people only acknowledge the sovereignty of God in theory, but do not have a real understanding of it, and their own notions and imaginings have not been resolved, then no matter for how many years they believe in God and how many things they experience, they will still not be able to gain the truth in the end” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. What It Means to Pursue the Truth (11)). Through God’s words, I realized that people will face difficult circumstances at different phases of their lives. People might not want to face such circumstances, but God’s intention is within them. If we do not seek the truth, live within our notions and imaginings, and misunderstand and complain about God, it will be difficult to learn lessons from these situations. There were lessons I could learn from my mom falling ill. I had to seek the truth and reflect on myself. I reflected on how when I heard my mom got cancer, I was worried that the treatment wouldn’t work. I also worried that if I didn’t care for her while she was receiving chemo at the hospital, she would be upset. Would she think she had raised me in vain? Due to this worry, I immediately lost all resolve to leave home to do my duty. I even argued with God in my heart. I felt that I had to stay back and care for my mom now that she was ill, and couldn’t leave home to do my duty. My affections ran too deep, and I had to seek the truth to resolve it.

Later on, I looked for relevant passages of God’s words to read. Almighty God says: “There is a saying in the nonbelieving world: ‘Crows feed their aging mothers and lambs kneel to suckle.’ There’s also this saying: ‘An unfilial person is lower than a beast.’ How grandiose these sayings sound! Actually, the phenomena mentioned in the first saying—‘Crows feed their aging mothers and lambs kneel to suckle’—really do exist, these are facts. However, they are simply phenomena found in the world of living things. They are merely a kind of law that God has established for various living creatures. All kinds of living creatures, including humans, abide by this law, and this further confirms that all living creatures are created by God. No living creature can break this law, and no living creature can transcend it. … Why do people say such things? Because in society and within groups of people, there are various ideas and generally held views that are incorrect. After people have been influenced, corroded, and rotted by these things, different ways of interpreting and dealing with the parent-child relationship arise within them, and they ultimately treat their parents as their creditors—creditors that they will never be able to repay their whole lives. There are even some people who feel guilty for their whole lives after their parents die, feeling guilty that they have failed to repay their parents’ kindness, because they once did something that didn’t make their parents happy or didn’t go the way their parents wanted it to. Tell Me, is this not excessive? People live amid their feelings, so they can only be encroached upon and disturbed by various ideas stemming from these feelings. People live in an environment that is colored by the ideology of corrupt mankind, so they are encroached upon and disturbed by various fallacious ideas, which makes their lives exhausting and less simple than those of other living creatures. However, right now, because God is working and is expressing the truth to tell people the truth of all these facts, and to enable them to understand the truth, after you come to understand the truth, these fallacious ideas and views will no longer burden you, and you will no longer use them as a guide for how you handle your relationship with your parents. Then, you will feel at ease in life. Feeling at ease in life does not mean that you do not know what your responsibilities and obligations are—you still know these things. It just depends on which perspective and methods you choose to approach your responsibilities and obligations with. One path is to take the route of feelings, and to deal with these things based on an emotion-driven approach, and the methods, ideas, and views that Satan guides man toward. The other path is to deal with these things based on the words that God has taught man. When people handle these matters according to Satan’s fallacious ideas and views, they can only live within the entanglements of their feelings, and they are never able to distinguish right from wrong. Under these circumstances, they can only live in a snare, always tangled up in matters of ‘You’re right, I’m wrong. You’ve given me more; I’ve given you less. You’re ungrateful. You’re out of line,’ and so on—never able to untangle themselves. However, after people understand the truth, they break free from their fallacious ideas and views and the snare of their feelings, and when they look at these matters again, everything becomes much simpler. If you abide by an aspect of the truth principles or an idea and view that is correct and comes from God, you will feel really at ease in life. Neither public opinion, nor the awareness of your conscience, nor the burden of your feelings will impede how you handle your relationship with your parents anymore; instead, these truth principles will enable you to face and handle this relationship in a correct and rational way. If you act according to the truth principles that God has given man, even if people criticize you behind your back, you will still feel at peace and secure and be unaffected in the depths of your heart. At the very least, in the depths of your heart you will not berate yourself, telling yourself that you’re an uncaring ingrate, or feel the accusation of your conscience anymore. This is because you will know that all of your actions are carried out in accordance with the methods that God has taught you, and that you are listening to and submitting to God’s words, and following His way. Listening to God’s words and following His way is the sense of conscience that people ought to possess most of all. You will only be a true person when you can do these things. If you have not, then you are an uncaring ingrate. Isn’t that the case? (It is.)” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. How to Pursue the Truth (17)). Through God’s words, I realized that the reason I was so miserable was because fallacious views like “Filial piety is a virtue to be held above all else” and “An unfilial person is lower than a beast,” with which Satan had inculcated me, had become deeply rooted in my mind. I felt that if I couldn’t be filial to my parents, that meant I was an ungrateful, unfilial daughter. I felt that it must have been difficult to raise me, especially given that I was born in an age where boys and men were deemed superior, which meant my mom suffered a lot of humiliation and scorn because I was a girl, but she loved me more than my little brother. She was also especially supportive of my faith and duty. She knew I had deep affections, so if something happened at home, she wouldn’t tell me for fear of distracting me and impacting my duty. Be it from an emotional or financial perspective, my mom gave me a lot of support and would often encourage me to do my duty properly. Thinking of all this and how I couldn’t be by her side to care for her when she was sick, I felt really upset. I always thought that as their daughter, if I didn’t honor them or didn’t care for them when they were sick, this was unfilial, ungrateful behavior. So I felt guilty and ashamed to face them. I had been deeply influenced by satanic poisons! If I continued to treat this through the lens of affection and traditional views, I would have to shoulder this ideological baggage, thinking that I was unfilial for not taking care of my mom. This would be a very tiring and miserable way to live. I had to actively forsake all this and learn to view people and things according to the truth in God’s words, only then could I rid myself of this suffering.

Later on, during devotionals, I came across this passage of God’s words. It gave me more clarity about how to treat my relationship with my parents. God’s words say: “As a child, you should understand that your parents are not your creditors. If you only pay heed to repaying your parents’ kindness, this will get in the way of many duties that you ought to do. There are many things that you must do in your life, and these duties that you ought to do are things that a created being should do, and that have been entrusted to you by the Creator, and they have nothing to do with you repaying your parents’ kindness. Showing filial piety to your parents, repaying them, returning their kindness—these things have nothing to do with your mission in life. It can also be said that it is not necessary for you to show filial piety to your parents, to repay them, or to fulfill any of your responsibilities to them. To put it plainly, you can do a bit of this and fulfill a bit of your responsibilities when your circumstances allow; when they do not, you do not need to force yourself to do so. If you cannot fulfill your responsibility to show filial piety to your parents, this is not a terrible mistake, it just goes against your conscience and moral justice somewhat, and you will be censured by some people—that is all. But at the very least, it does not go against the truth. If it is for the sake of doing your duty and following God’s will, then you will even be approved of by God. Therefore, as for being filial to your parents, as long as you understand the truth and understand God’s requirements for people, then even if your conditions do not permit you to be filial to your parents, your conscience will not feel rebuked. Do your hearts not feel steady now that you have understood this aspect of the truth? (Yes.) Some people say: ‘Though God won’t condemn me, not being able to show filial piety to my parents makes me feel guilty and uneasy in my conscience.’ In that case, your stature is too small, you still do not understand the truth and cannot see through to the essence of this matter. You do not understand that man’s destiny is subject to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, and you are not willing to accept God’s sovereignty and arrangements. You always have your own will and your own feelings, and always want to stay by your parents’ side to fulfill your filial duties. Your own will and feelings are directing and dominating you; they have become your life. If you choose to act based on your own will and your feelings, then you are not practicing the truth or submitting to it, you are betraying the truth. Your circumstances and environment clearly do not permit you to fulfill your filial duties at your parents’ side, but you still always feel indebted to your parents, and in your heart, you are never able to let go of these things. This proves one thing: You do not accept the truth. On a doctrinal level, you acknowledge that God’s words are correct, but you do not accept them as the truth and use them as the principles of your actions. So, at the very least, judging from how you treat your parents, you are not a person who pursues the truth. This is because, in this matter, you do not practice according to God’s words, but instead are bent on satisfying the requirements of your feelings and your conscience, insisting on showing filial piety to your parents and repaying their kindness. Although God does not condemn you for making this choice, ultimately you are the one whose life will suffer a loss as a result of this” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. How to Pursue the Truth (17)). After reading God’s words I felt much brighter. I saw that the way my parents had raised me was all due to God’s sovereignty and arrangements. My mom’s kind treatment was really God’s grace. After entering the faith, my mom gave me a lot of support so that I could do my duty in peace. This might have outwardly seemed like my mom’s kindness, but in actuality, it was because God knew my stature and made arrangements according to my needs. It was my mom’s duty and responsibility to support me in my faith. God says that our parents are not our creditors, and that being filial to our parents is just a responsibility and obligation, not our mission as people. If the conditions are right, we can care for them and show filial piety to them, but if not and we can’t, it is not a disgrace, because there are many things we must do in this life. We have duties that we should do as created beings, and we cannot live just to show filial piety to our parents. There are also many nonbelievers who spend lots of time away from their parents due to their careers and family and are unable to care for their parents, but people understand and don’t condemn or mock them. As for me, I became mired in my thankfulness to my parents, and would often feel upset and guilty about not being able to be with them to care for them and would even opt not to leave home to do my duty. My affections were just too strong! We were in a moment where the gospel was greatly spreading, and as a church leader I ought to have been even more considerate of God’s intention. I should lead my brothers and sisters to bear witness to God’s gospel of the last days and allow even more people to hear God’s voice and receive His salvation in the last days. This was my duty and my responsibility. But instead, I believed that caring for and honoring my parents was the most important thing I could do. I had been a believer for years and ate and drank so much of God’s words, but when faced with an actual situation, I was unable to submit to God’s orchestrations and arrangements, fulfill my duty, or handle the situation using the truth principles. I was betraying and failing to accept the truth! I realized that if I continued to live by these traditional thoughts and views and didn’t repent to God and fulfill my duty, I would ultimately be revealed and eliminated. I prayed to God in my heart, “Oh God! My mom’s illness has thoroughly revealed my disbelieving viewpoints. I see now that my stature is quite small and I lack the truth reality. I now understand that showing filial piety to my parents is not my mission. Fulfilling my duty as a created being is my true mission and responsibility. I am willing to forsake my fallacious views and put my mom’s illness in Your hands. No matter what happens, I will keep to my duty and not become Satan’s laughingstock.” After prayer, I felt much more at ease and was willing to rely upon God to fulfill my given duty.

After a while, I consulted with a Chinese medical doctor about my mom and asked him to treat her. The doctor said, “The cancer has already metastasized all over her body and cannot be cured. All I can do is prescribe her half a month of herbs and see how it goes.” When I saw the conclusion he’d reached, my heart just dropped. I thought about how before when I came home and saw my mom coughing, I never took her to the hospital and just got her some Chinese herbs and left it at that. If I had taken her to the hospital sooner and gotten her treatment more quickly, would things have turned out this way? The more I thought, the more upset and guilty I felt, and I became very despondent. So, I prayed to God asking Him to guide me out of that state. Later on, I read this passage of God’s words: “Your parents falling seriously ill or meeting with some great misfortune is what they are supposed to experience. In a human life, it is very normal to experience birth, aging, illness, and death, and to encounter various matters, great and small. If you are an adult, then you should approach these matters calmly and correctly. Do not engage in excessive self-blame or have excessive feelings of indebtedness because you are unable to take care of your parents, and even more so, do not invest too much energy into this, and thus affect your pursuit of the truth and your proper performance of your duty. Some people think that parents get sick because they miss their children. Is that the case? Some people’s children are by their side all year round, but don’t they still get sick? When people get sick and what illnesses they get in their lives are all orchestrated by God’s hand, and have nothing to do with whether their children are by their side or not. If God has not arranged for your parents to fall ill as part of their fates, then nothing will happen to them, even if you aren’t with them. If they are destined to encounter some illness or great misfortune in their lives, what can you change about this even if you’re by their side? They still won’t be able to avoid it, right? (Right.) It’s just that, as their child, because you have this blood tie with your parents, you will feel upset when you hear that they are sick. This is very normal. However, there’s no need for you to ponder on how to help your parents get rid of their pain or resolve their difficulties because they are encountering illness or great misfortune. Your parents have experienced these kinds of things more than a few times. If God arranges an environment to rid them of these issues, then, sooner or later, they will vanish completely. If these issues are life hurdles for them, and they are things that they must experience, then they cannot avoid them, and it is up to God how long they must experience them for; people cannot change this. If you want to rely on your own strength to resolve these issues, and want to analyze and investigate their causes and consequences, that is a foolish thought, and it is unnecessary. You should not act in this way. You do not need to expend too much energy finding people to help, or finding the best doctors, or arranging for the best hospital bed for them—you do not need to rack your brain doing all of these things. If you really do have some excess energy, then you should do a good job at the duty you’re supposed to perform now. Your parents have their own fates. No one can escape the age at which they are supposed to die. Your parents are not the masters of your fate, and in the same way, you are not the master of your parents’ fates. If something is fated to happen to them, what can you do about it? What effect can you being anxious and looking for solutions achieve? It cannot achieve anything; it depends on God’s intentions. If God wants to take them away, making it so that you have nothing to worry about back home and can do your duty with peace of mind, can you interfere with this? Can you propose conditions to God? What should you do at this time? You should submit to God’s orchestrations and arrangements. If someone racks their brain coming up with solutions, investigates, analyzes, and puts the blame on themselves, feeling guilty toward their parents, are these the thoughts and actions that a person ought to have? (No.) These are all manifestations of a lack of submission to God and the truth; they are irrational, unwise, and rebellious toward God. People should not have these manifestations. Do you understand? (Yes.)” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. How to Pursue the Truth (17)). Through God’s words I realized that God orchestrates what hardships people will face and how much suffering they undergo based on their needs and stature. As for when people will face certain situations and how long they must endure them, this is all ruled over and arranged by God. None of this can be decided by mankind, much less should these things be analyzed from a mere human perspective. People must learn to accept from God and submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements. Take my mom’s illness, superficially, it might have seemed like her condition worsened because she wasn’t taken to the hospital soon enough, but actually this was just her fate. Man’s life and death are all in God’s hands. If God does not permit it, even great catastrophes will bring no harm to people. For instance, my dad got in a bad car accident and all other passengers were badly injured but he came away with light injuries and recovered the fastest. In our lives, we are carrying out our missions. If someone has completed their mission in life, they will depart from this world in the way according to God’s plans. If they haven’t completed their mission, then no matter what hardship they face, they will make it through safely. My mother’s illness was quite advanced and the doctor said she was beyond recovery, but how long she would live was not for any mere person to determine, it would be ruled over and arranged by God. The reason I was so miserable was because I had extravagant desires and demands of God and always wanted my mom to recover. As soon as things didn’t go my way, I became negative and miserable. This was all because I didn’t know God’s sovereignty and couldn’t submit to God. After understanding God’s intention, I prayed to Him, “Oh God! It is not for me to decide how my mom’s recovery will fare or how long she will live. I should put aside my own demands and I’m willing to submit no matter what.” After prayer, I felt calm and tranquil. I then read this passage of the Lord Jesus’ words: “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Almighty God says: “If your love for your parents exceeds your love for God, then you are unworthy of following God, and you are not one of His followers. It can also be said that you are not an overcomer, and God does not want you” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. How to Pursue the Truth (17)). God said that those who love their parents more than Him are not fit to be His followers. I had to stop living by these fallacious views Satan had instilled in me. I had to start living differently, view people and things, and conduct myself and act according to God’s words and the truth principles. Now I’ve gradually started applying myself to my duty. I still sometimes worry about my mom, but then I think that in her life, the situations she encounters and the suffering she must go through are all predetermined and orchestrated by God. It is all up to God how long my mom will live and how she will depart, it is not for me to determine. As I’ve realized this, I’ve become more at ease. Recently, I learned that my mom’s condition is now stable and that she has learned some lessons through this illness. Hearing this news, I felt so deeply moved and also felt ashamed for my lack of faith in God. I recently proactively applied to do duties away from home.

Through this experience, I have gained an understanding of my fatal weakness and gained discernment of the fallacious views I’ve always held. I won’t live by these views anymore and can properly treat my relationship with my parents. This is all due to God’s guidance.