Unashamed with Irene Sun
In the face of intense shame heaped upon her by others throughout her life, Wen Wei Chieh was never ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This woman of the faith endured poverty, loss, and rejection at every turn, but she stood firm on the Word of God, knowing the Lord would remain faithful to her. She endured a traumatic childhood, the loss of countless family members, an unfaithful husband, and imprisonment in Communist China—most of the circumstances in her life could have filled her with shame, but she ultimately knew she had nothing to be ashamed of as a child of God.
Irene Sun was born in Malaysia and is the author of the picture books Taste and See: All About God’s Goodness and God Counts: Numbers in His Word and His World. She studied liturgy and literature at Yale University (MAR) and Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (ThM). She now teaches her four boys at home with her preacher husband, Hans. They belong to Pittsburgh Chinese Church.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
As we’re getting started, can you tell us about Wen Wei Chieh and how she got her name? What other names did she go by?
What was she known for? Can you tell us a little bit about her story?
What was Wen Wei Chieh’s relationship with her father like? How did his death impact her and the rest of her family?
When did she come to faith in Christ? How did God use her sickness to bring her to salvation?
Can we talk about her baptism? How did the congregation respond? What did Wen Wei Chieh do?
How did Wen Wei Cheih and her mother’s faith contrast the religion of pre-communist China?
What other hardships did Wei Chieh face and how did she remain faithful to God in them? How did God continue to use her physical suffering to rescue her?
How much did Wen Wei Chieh love her Bible? What was she willing to risk to have it? What did she affectionately nickname it? (Her compass)
How did reading her story encourage you to cling to God in faith, just as Wen Wei Chieh did?
What can we learn about steadfast endurance from Wen Wei Chieh?
TWO QUESTIONS I ASK EVERY GUEST
What are your 3 simple joys when it comes to studying church history?
What figure from church history has had the greatest impact on your journey with Jesus?
NOTES & QUOTES
Wen had a favorite refrain throughout her life, even in imprisonment: “I belong to the Lord. I am his responsibility.” Because she knew she belonged to him, there was nothing that could happen to her outside God’s will.
Born in 1899 in the southern part of China where the climate is warmer. At the time, baby girls (especially from poor families) were typically cast away and left to die. Surprisingly, Wen’s father did not reject her, but adored her.
Her father (uneducated and an idol worshiper) was determined she would be educated and she was enrolled as the only girl in school at age 5. Wen’s father died when she was only 6 years old and left behind a huge debt.
One day a creditor came with his henchmen and pushed their way into their home. He forced Wen’s mother to put her thumbprint on a piece of paper, which was a contract to sell Wen’s 3-year-old sister, and they took her away. Wen became very ill, and was taken to the hospital run by missionaries. That is where the Lord met them and where Wen heard the Gospel and believed. God used her sickness to bring her to salvation.
They began a new life when the doctor offered her mother a job and Wen attended the missionary school. Her mother was baptized, and Wen took the catechism class and was baptized after being put off for a long time and pushing for baptism.
“The way the Lord called her out of darkness into glorious light is giving her a gift of feeling this sense of belonging to God and nobody else. I think that sense of belonging really carried her through the rest of her life.”
She had an arranged marriage and was given away at age 15 and it did not go well. She was despised and mistreated by her mother-in-law, but eventually had a better relationship with her. Six years into her marriage, after taking care of her mother-in-law, Wen found out her husband was living with another woman all along.
Later, she returned to southern China and assumed leadership of an orphanage there. Under Communist rule, she was arrested due to foreign ties to the orphanage. The first time she was arrested in 1949, she asked the policemen to wait while she put her Bible and songbook in her bag. As she was detained at the police station, she took out her songbook and began to sing.
Because of the power of the Holy Spirit, she didn’t feel ashamed even though authority figures were trying to put her to shame. Instead of feeling rejected, she knew she was accepted. She would not be manipulated by those people trying to shame her.
Meekness—she is so sure she belongs to her heavenly father and knows she is his child. She submits to his authority and knows she is safe as long as she obeys Christ, knowing she’s in his will. “Blessed are the meek.”
“Meekness is a courageous acceptance of Yahweh’s will. So that’s why she’s able to say, ‘I belong to the Lord, I am his responsibility.’ She is trusting that her heavenly father knows her completely and loves her completely.” She had a steadfast fear of the Lord, and she was able to constantly live before the face of God.
The opposite of meekness is selectivity: when we stand over God’s Word. We think we can take his Word as a suggestion. We need to stand under the Word of God, which is meekness.
After she was out of prison and lived through countless tortures, she was traveling through a Communist checkpoint and was caught with a Bible (she refused to get rid of hers). The Communist society treated her poorly since she was an elderly woman but allowed her to have papers to leave the country and see her son in America.
She refused to get rid of her Bible for that voyage and somehow got through security to leave China.
“Her meekness is so completely tied to her resolve to keep the Word of God literally and figuratively. She keeps the Word of God close to her at all times.”
“I wonder how much less I would struggle with shame if my whole world, like Wen’s, was just enveloped by his Word.” (Proverbs 9:10)
“If my focus was so honed in on, ‘what does God have to say about how I ought to live my life?’ I wonder how much less I would struggle with shame?”
We confuse guilt and shame so often. When we feel shame, we think we’ve done something wrong but we need to stop ourselves and think: have I transgressed against my Lord? Have I transgressed my heavenly Father and his commandments? The Lord tells us to meditate on his Word day and night, because that’s the standard by which we are to live. If we keep living by the standards of the world, it’s not bad, but our shame should not come from these other standards.
A helpful way to distinguish between shame and guilt:
We can be guilty and feel shame. (When shame and guilt are aligned, i.e. Garden of Eden and God’s standards) and the right response is to fall at Jesus’ feet.
We can be guilty and not feel ashamed. (need to repent)
We can be shamed (not feel shamed) by other people and not be guilty (ex. Wen’s story with her Mother-in-Law)
We can feel shame but not be guilty.
We can be shamed by culture and feel shamed and interpret those feelings of shame as guilt (ex. body image)
We can feel shame and interpret those feelings as being guilty of one particular sin, when in reality we are feeling shame because we are guilty of an entirely different sin (ex. Irene bringing expensive and special stamps to school and them getting stolen—she was ashamed of being guilty of losing the stamps, when in reality she was guilty of doing something secretly behind her mother’s back and disobeying her)
We need to spend time considering the root of our shame to root out true sin. Think of Peter and Judas’ stories. Peter denied Jesus three times and Judas betrayed Jesus. They both felt shame and were both guilty. (Matthew 26:75) “Peter remembered the saying of Jesus…” In their moment of intense shame, Peter remembered the words of Jesus. Because Judas did not remember the words of Jesus, he died in his shame.
The Gospel is the ultimate covering for our shame: Jesus bore our objective guilt upon the cross. But Jesus also bore our shame. (Matt. 27:27) “We don’t need to be ashamed anymore when we are in Christ because his glory, his honor covers our shame. And even when we know we’re guilty, even when we know that our shame is true and right because we’ve done something wrong, we don’t need to be ashamed because of the Gospel because Jesus has taken our shame when he was mocked and reviled and rejected when he was on earth.”
Continue to think deeply about where am I experiencing guilt and shame and how does Jesus meet me there? How has he taken those from me?
Elisabeth Elliot when writing Amy Carmichael’s biography: “We read biographies to get out of ourselves and into another’s skin.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What did you learn about God through the life of Wen Wei Chieh?
What part of your life might the Lord be trying to teach you to offer up to him for the sake of the Gospel?
What do you think of when you think of the word, “meek”? How do you see meekness in Jesus?
Do you see God’s provision for you in your life? Why or why not?
What is the gospel and how does it impact your life today?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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