The world is cruel. To continue believing in a loving God in the face of a cruel world requires tremendous depth.

But many people choose a shortcut: they close their eyes.

I grew up in the church, and from a young age I knew one thing: Christians are easily frightened. Not frightened by ghosts, but frightened by “the end of the world.” Every few years there would be a wave of end-times prophecies—some pastor seeing a vision, some book calculating dates, some international situation being interpreted as the fulfillment of Revelation. Then a group of people would start worrying, a group would start praying, and a group would start making absurd decisions.

The 1995 leap month incident was the most absurd I’d ever witnessed.

What Happened That Year

In 1994, US-based author Zheng Langping published the book “1995 Leap Month Eight,” which, based on the ancient Chinese prophetic system of Tuibei Tu (Push-Back Chart), argued that great calamities befall every leap eighth month of the lunar calendar, and predicted that the CCP would attack Taiwan by force in 1995. Upon publication in Taiwan, this book immediately triggered panic, going through four editions and seventy printings in just two months.

If it had been just a book, things wouldn’t have been so serious. The problem was that the church caught hold of this fear and amplified it a hundredfold.

Some pastors began claiming they had received “revelations from God”—some said they saw visions, others said they were told in dreams. The core message was always the same: God would use the CCP’s military action to judge Taiwan because Taiwan’s idol worship was too severe. A well-known large church held briefings about this, while Christian-operated immigration agencies distributed flyers right outside the church, advertising “beachfront villas for only $100,000 USD.”

Then, in July 1995, the CCP actually began missile tests and military exercises.

Panic instantly escalated to action. Large numbers of believers sold their houses and liquidated their assets in an extremely short time, taking their entire families to emigrate to Belize in Central America—the place designated by certain pastors as “the refuge God had prepared.” The True Jesus Church, with its military dependents’ village background, was particularly hard hit, even having to file lawsuits against pastors who preached these “revelations.”

The result? The leap month passed. 1995 passed. Nothing happened.

Those believers in Belize faced not God’s protection, but survival difficulties in a foreign land. Some returned to Taiwan quietly, carrying debt and broken families. And the book’s author? Reports said he made over ten million Taiwan dollars and emigrated to North America to live a comfortable life.

What I found most unacceptable: not a single pastor who had promoted these messages in churches publicly apologized afterward. Not one. To this day, thirty years later, as far as I know, none still have.

Instant Noodle Faith

I spent many years afterward thinking about what went wrong. It wasn’t just a matter of “failed prophecy”—failed prophecies are too common in religious history to be shocking. The real question was: why would a faith community so easily lose their collective judgment?

My conclusion: because their faith had not been examined through reflection.

Accepting that “the world is about to be destroyed” is the simplest faith choice. It saves the pain of thinking and the trouble of dialoguing with different viewpoints. It even gives one a sense of spiritual superiority—“I know the truth while you’re still in the dark.”

I call this “instant noodle faith.” Tear open the package, add hot water, done in three minutes. Simple, fast, immediately satisfying. But no nutrition. And eating too much causes problems.

The characteristics of instant noodle faith: it doesn’t require you to understand anything. You don’t need to understand the historical context of Scripture, the literary characteristics of prophetic literature, theologians’ two-thousand-year debate on eschatology, or Taiwan’s geopolitical reality. You just need to “believe”—believe what some authority figure tells you, then do what they say.

This isn’t faith; it’s dependency. And dependency is the most fragile thing when facing fear.

Theology Is Not a Luxury

Many believers frown when they hear the word “theology.” They think theology belongs in academia and has nothing to do with “real faith life.” Some even treat anti-intellectualism as a sign of spirituality—as if “simple faith” were more pleasing to God than “thinking too much.”

The 1995 incident proved the danger of this mindset.

At the time, quite a few pastors raised very reasonable objections: “If God wants to judge Taiwan because Taiwan worships idols, then why doesn’t God judge the CCP first, since the CCP advocates atheism and even denies God’s existence?” This logic was very simple—anyone who had taken basic theology courses could have thought of it. But in the panicked atmosphere, these rational voices were drowned out.

Theology’s task is not to tell you “what God is going to do.” No one knows that answer. Theology’s task is to help you build a framework for thinking, so that when facing uncertainty, you don’t immediately collapse.

Specifically, theological training teaches you several things: how to discern the nature of prophecy—prophetic literature in the Bible (like Revelation, Daniel) has specific literary rules and historical contexts; it’s not a codebook for matching current events. Understanding the multiplicity of God’s nature—“judgment” is not the only, or even primary, mode of God’s interaction with humanity; the Bible equally discusses grace, companionship, and presence in suffering. Questioning the legitimacy of authority—when a pastor claims to have received “revelation from God,” you have theological grounds and responsibility to examine that claim.

Fifteen years of theological training gave me one most important ability: the courage to face “I don’t know.” Why does God allow suffering? I don’t know. When will the end times come? I don’t know. But “not knowing” doesn’t equal “anything goes.” The blank space of not knowing should be filled with humility and continued thinking, not with fear and random answers.

The Antidote to Fear Is Not Certainty

After the 2016 Tainan earthquake, some church figures again linked natural disasters to specific groups’ “sins,” claiming this was God’s judgment. Same logic, same playbook, twenty years after the leap month incident.

This made me realize the problem wasn’t just one failed prophecy, but a deeply rooted mindset: using “certain answers” to combat fear.

When people face uncertainty, they instinctively crave certainty. Taiwan Strait tensions are high—the certain answer is “God will judge Taiwan.” Earthquake casualties are severe—the certain answer is “some group’s sin brought retribution.” These answers are all terrible, but they share a common “advantage”: they make people feel the world can be understood, even if that understanding is distorted.

Faith should not provide this kind of cheap certainty.

In my article “God Beyond Definition,” I explored this problem—when we use human language and concepts to “define” God, we’re actually diminishing Him. Similarly, when we use simple causal narratives to “explain” suffering, we’re not understanding God’s work; we’re cramming God into our limited cognitive framework.

True faith courage is not “I know what God will do,” but “I don’t know, but I still trust.” It’s not being unafraid because we have certain answers, but choosing to live out justice and mercy even without answers.

Reconstruction After Collapse

I’m not trying to negate faith—quite the opposite.

The reason the leap month incident took me so many years to process wasn’t because it made me doubt God, but because it forced me to seriously confront a question: what is my faith actually built on?

If it’s built on “what some pastor said,” then when the pastor is wrong, faith collapses. If it’s built on “the world is about to be destroyed so hurry up and believe,” then when the world doesn’t end, faith becomes meaningless. The utilitarian exchange of “believe in Jesus for peace” is the same—when peace disappears, faith goes bankrupt too.

These are all foundations of sand.

The core transformation in my process of reconstructing faith was: from “faith gives me answers” to “faith gives me the ability to face problems.”

Theology is not a system of answers. It’s a training—training you to still be able to think, dialogue, and remain open when facing complex, contradictory, painful reality, rather than escaping into simple answers. Micah 6:8 says it clearly: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” There’s no “knowing what the future holds” in there. There’s a way of living—in uncertainty, still choosing to do what’s right.

In making various business decisions, I’ve repeatedly experienced the value of this faith training. Facing market uncertainty, technical uncertainty, human uncertainty, what’s most useful isn’t some prophet telling you what the future holds, but whether you have a tested framework for judgment that lets you make responsible choices even with incomplete information.

This is actually the same thing I discussed in “Taste in the Post-Code Era”—the essence of taste is “making good judgments amid uncertainty.” So is the essence of faith. The only difference is the coordinate system: one uses business and technical coordinates, the other uses existential and meaning coordinates.

Opening Our Eyes

Thirty years have passed. Taiwan wasn’t washed in blood, but fearful narratives in the church have never truly disappeared. They’ve just changed packaging—from “CCP invasion” to “end-times persecution,” from “leap month” to various new dates and events.

Every time, I want to ask the same question: can your faith withstand opening your eyes to see the real world?

If it can’t, that’s not the world’s problem—it’s faith’s problem. Or more precisely, it’s the problem of faith never having been seriously examined.

Faith should never be escapist withdrawal from people. It should be the courage to walk among people, face reality, and bear weight.

And this courage doesn’t fall from heaven. It grows slowly through reflection, through dialogue, through repeated cycles of collapse and reconstruction.