The Remarkable Legacy of Dr Li Wen Liang

The world needs to remember the Christian faith and remarkable courage of Dr Li Wen Liang, who worked at Wuhan Central Hospital and was one of the chief whistleblowers regarding COVID-19. Dr Wen Liang himself died of the virus. He was only thirty-four.

Australia’s Sixty Minutes provides a concise summary in the pivotal role that Dr Wen Liang played in uncovering the scandal, as well as how the Communist Chinese Government is now trying to “re-write history and [falsely] claim that it was transparent all along”:

But another aspect to Dr. Li Wen Liang that should not be overlooked is that he was at least a ‘faith seeker’ of the Christian faith, and more than likely, a genuine Christian. Regardless of Dr. Wen Liang’s exact standing before God, though, his legacy needs to be remembered since he, as well as Dr. Ai Fen—who has since inexplicably disappeared—brought the threat of the current pandemic to the world’s attention.

The words of Jesus in John 15:13-17 ring absolutely true:

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.

In not only serving as a doctor to treat those with a highly contagious and deadly disease but especially risking his own career to expose a massive government cover-up, Dr Li Wen Liang is a wonderful example of what love-in-action looks like. Of, in particular, being willing to lay down one’s life for those around you.

Eternity News records a moving poem which is supposed to have been written by Dr. Wen Liang—translated from the original Chinese—which expresses both the simple faith and remarkable courage of this extraordinary man:

There is a light in the sky!
At the end of that light is the heaven that people often talk about.
But I’d rather not go there.
I’d rather go back to my hometown in Wuhan.
I have my new house there,
For which I still have to pay off the loan every month.
How can I give up?
How can I give up?
For my parents without their son,
How sad must it be?
For my sweetheart without her husband,
How can she face the vicissitudes in her future?

I am already gone.
I see them taking my body,
Putting it into a bag,
With which lie many compatriots
Gone like me,
Being pushed into the fire in the hearth
At dawn.

Goodbye, my dear ones.
Farewell, Wuhan, my hometown.
Hopefully, after the disaster,
You’ll remember someone once
Tried to let you know the truth as soon as possible.
Hopefully, after the disaster,
You’ll learn what it means to be righteous.
No more good people
Should suffer from endless fear,
And helpless sadness.

‘I have fought the good fight.
And I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.
Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness.’
2 Timothy 4:7, Holy Bible.”

Dr Wen Liang’s legacy is well worth reflecting upon as we come together to celebrate the ultimate example of love at Easter. The One who died that we might live. The One who bore our sin and shame so that we might be forgiven and accepted. The one who was condemned so that we might go free! (Isaiah 53:4-6).