Idol worship, complete with burning incense and the offering of food is such a foreign concept to Westerners.

However, there are many gods being worshiped and offerings made to ancestors in temples all over Taiwan as in the picture above on the left. The picture above on the right is of an idol in a sort-of “Idols-R-Us” store across the street from the temple we visited.

A lot of Taiwanese find the large number of gods confusing and often do not know who some of the gods are, where they are from, or what they are supposed to do. Nevertheless, these forms of worship are a very real part of everyday life especially the worship of their deceased ancestors by praying to them while burning incense and making food offerings at the temple. So then one of the many questions a missionary has to ask is, “How do Taiwanese Christians honor their mother and father?” (that is in the Bible). In other words, what cultural forms of worship are redeemable and which ones are not? Where is the line? It is not as easy as throwing away the form when it has so much meaning and purpose in an individual’s life.

Below is a video of Robert who is a sociologist/anthropologist who tells of the challenges to contextualize the Gospel in Taiwan.