Teaching about Christianity in Japan 3: Stumbling blocks

So this post describes the set of challenges I’m up against. These, drawn from a variety of sources, are common Japanese responses when they hear the Gospel. Some are objections, some are misconceptions, and some are both. I’ve listed them in roughly the order that I think I will have to work hard to address them — the ones at the top are the most challenging, and the ones further down less so.

This post has three and a half purposes.

• To collect these in one spot as a reference work I can use as I prepare the class

• To invite Japanese Christian sisters and brothers I’ve met in a bunch of contexts to add to the list, or to refine my understanding of the issue

• To invite all my other Christian sisters and brothers to keep these in prayer. The half purpose grows out of the third one: pure enrichment. Working through the friction spots between another culture and your faith is a way to grow in your understanding

So, here they are.

1. Christianity is like gun ownership — something for Americans, not Japanese. Japan has existed for thousands of years without a substantial Christian influence. It’s just not what we believe or do.

2. What do you mean, salvation is a “free gift”? Gifts are never free. The more valuable the gift, the bigger the obligation, the more enormous the work required to hold up your end of the relationship by giving back something as good or a tiny bit better.

3. Religious people are crazy and dangerous and do violent and dishonest things. Some might draw a line between state Shinto and the events of World War Two. Some will have a hard time distinguishing Christianity from the Unification Church, especially after the recent assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe. Some may even put Christianity in the same category as a cult that carried out a lethal nerve gas attack on the subway almost thirty years ago.

4. For Japanese people, becoming Christian means losing our place of belonging. Our families are likely to reject us, we cannot be buried in a Buddhist cemetery alongside thousands of years of ancestors, and in some sense we become less Japanese altogether.

5. Good things, good outcomes, are always earned by hard work. If I were Christian, I would have to put my job and other involvements in second place to my beliefs, which is impossible to imagine. And the entire idea of “salvation by grace through faith and not by works” is like dividing by zero — that’s just not how the world is.

6. Christianity says the Trinity is the only god and Jesus is the only way to salvation, but we have millions of kami. Either Christians are just wrong, or else you’re insulting us.

7. I don’t need Jesus. People aren’t stuck with a sin nature; people are basically good, and can reach human perfection as if we practice discipline and always try our best.

8. A lot of Christians seem to be pretty bad people. There’s a lot of nice talk in the Bible, but talk is cheap. From the Spanish Inquisition to all the sexual abuse today, people who become Christians don’t seem to live it out, so there must be something flawed or empty at the heart of the entire set of teachings.

9. Religion is the enemy of science. Faith is what you fall back on when you are unable or unwilling to think hard.

10. Religion is for old people. Nobody my age pays any attention to Buddhism or Shinto unless it’s to keep our grandparents happy. Religion is like Facebook; outdated and almost gone. Why would I waste my time on it?

11. Religion is for good people. Christians are good people. I’m not a very good person. If I tried to join a group of Christians and they found out what I am like, they would embarrass me and then kick me out.

Next week’s post will lay out the rough draft of my approach to presenting Christianity in a way designed to evade misunderstandings and motivate my students to give it an attentive, thoughtful hearing.