Be Prepared to Stand

Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.

One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek Him in His temple.

- Psalm 27:2-3

Recently I read a book entitled, "The Two Empires of Japan", which describes the history of the clash between Christianity and Japan religion. The author specifically focuses on the sixty years prior to World War II, when through successive compromises, the church in Japan bent to the government's pressure.

By the end of the war churches had been joined into a single, national "united" church, and had followed the nation in bowing down at Shinto shrines, putting "god shelves" in their homes, worshiping the emperor, reporting their organizational decisions to the sun goddess (Amaterasu) at Ise Shrine, altered their hymns and creeds to eliminate phrases that would suggest Christ was above the emperor, and more.

Evangelized Unprepared to Stand

The author summarized some of the reasons the church was able to "compromise with apostasy" to such an incredible degree by looking at how Christianity was taught and spread in the years leading up to the government's pressure:

There was a common, erroneous appeal to accept Christianity for its superior fruits in a better civilization for Japan, rather than the preaching of the whole counsel of God. Further, the mistaken policy was also all too common of refraining from preaching the claims of Christ forthrightly over against those of the ancestral idolatry, the falsely optimistic view being held that the latter would fall off later since the people seemed to be so ready to accept Christianity. Finally, there was the failure adequately to take into account that the persistent demands for "independence" and "non-denominationalism" were all too frequently motivated primarily from a desire to adapt Christianity to the requirements of the Japanese nationalistic spirit.

Wanting to accomodate the people and not offend them, many missionaries (and later Japanese leaders who'd learned from them) sought to spread the Gospel this way, unaware of a strong cultic spirit underneath and what was being orchestrated beneath the surface in their day. But attempting to approach evangelization in this way had the effect of raising up Christians who were not prepared to withstand pressure to compromise, and finally who were not even able to consider that enduring persecution for Christ's sake was the witness God was calling them to.

More than ever, as I read the book, I was impressed that God is calling us to a life of martyrdom -- whether it ever means physically being persecuted or not, He is calling us to "martyrdom" every day. There are times that we will be afraid of how "faith" will look. There are times that we are afraid speaking of Him will be "offensive". There are times when we worry that speaking His truth will make someone less "open" to the truth, and so we think maybe perhaps if we hold back on the truth, that the person will come to it eventually...

But what happened to Christianity in Japan in the years running up to WWII screams in a haunting lesson of painful contrast, and I hear the Spirit crying out,

"No! No! Learn NOW, be prepared to stand NOW! Don't be afraid of following Me NOW. You don't know what's coming tomorrow or in the coming years. Stand for Me NOW!"

He's calling us to "die" (be martyrs) to our embarassment about Him, to "die" to our desire to please people and not look strange. He's calling us to be martyrs in this way. If we don't do it today, then we will not be able to stand when more difficult times come upon us.

He's calling us today to stand for Him, His truth and His love. If we shy from these today, we may not realize that we are weakening not only our own foundation, but the foundation of those we evangelize to. We know that as much as we love people we are ministering to, that God loves them even more than we do. Telling them His whole truth is not a "risk" to His gospel nor to His love. Telling them who He really is, and that other things are simply not Him, not the real thing, telling them this is not going to jeapordize "what could've been".

In light of what happened in Japanese history, we owe it to our 'spiritual children' (those we minister to and raise up in Him) to give them the whole Lamb. We owe it to them to not hold back because we fear offending them. God didn't hold back from putting some "difficult" things in the Bible because He knew that somewhere in our lives we would need these things. He is God, and we can't fully understand Him, but we trust that He is love. We need to give Him that same trust and respect when we present Him to people whom we love and whom we want to be saved.

The Picture

As I reeled at the painful lesson of Japanese history, I got this picture in the Spirit of being surrounded and standing for Christ and for Love. The imagery comes from a Zhang Yimou film entitled, "To Live", which tells the story of one Chinese family going through the many major social upheavals in Chinese history. At one point in the film, during the Chinese civil war, a father (who owns a puppet troupe) is snatched away from his job by the Nationalist Army and put in their ranks to fight against the Communists. He makes friends with another man like himself who is not caught up in the "cause" of the Nationalists, nor in the cause of the Communists.

After one cold night while on retreat, he and his friend wake up to find that the rest of the company of soldiers has fled on without them, leaving only the dead behind. As they forage among the dead bodies for warmer clothing and food, they suddenly realize the Communist Army is coming and they try to run away. The camera pulls back to a wide-shot as the great numbers of Communist soldiers surround the two surrendering Nationalist soldiers.

They are not executed or treated badly, but are rather taken into the Communist Army and are now on that "side". The father entertains the other Communist soldiers by putting on puppet shows for them. When the war ends (with the Communists victorious), the father goes home to his family with a certificate of how he helped the Communist Army during the "revolution".

The nation is unified, and people work hard under great hope that things will get better and better. But the Communist system is totalitarian, and one by one the family goes through personal heartaches and observes control, paranoia, and all the painful fruits of authoritarian rule in this system that was supposed to bring them a continually improving life.

Perhaps the title of the film, "To Live", speaks of the lesson I believe God is calling us to understand, "to live" -- so that we may truly live in Him. In Jesus' words:

"Whoever finds His life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."

- Matthew 10:39

Discerning and Our Call to Stand

In the same way, during Japan's march to WWII, it seemed as if things were getting "better and better" progress-wise in the nation. Social improvements were being made and many other apparent "fruits" of great progress. The future seemed to hold great promise. Christian writers such as William Axling wrote glowing reports and books of how rapidly Christianity was being embraced by the Japanese (I have one of his books from 1923, and it is eerie to hold).

A generation of Japanese Christian children were raised by Christian parents and missionaries who did not want to confront certain items in the nationalistic spirit -- a pride in the nation's "uniqueness", a clinging to Shinto, emperor-devotion, and "cultural" habits like praying to dead ancestors, etc. Because of this the spiritual 'children' were raised not seeing any great problem with compromising the gospel.

Like the two men being surrounded by the army in To Live, these Japanese Christians soon found the church being "surrounded" by government and societal pressure to compromise, to change sides. Because they were not raised knowing their foundation well, they easily compromised. Like the two men in To Live, these spiritual children did not completely understand the "cause" of their "army" and their "side". It was no big issue then for them to switch sides when pressure came and when surrounded.

I believe God is calling us to learn from history so that we do not repeat it. Both in Japan, in America, in our churches, and everywhere and anywhere. We need to not be ashamed of the Gospel. We need to not be ashamed to say that the Gospel is real and something else is simply false -- not the real, living God. We also need not be ashamed of our failures in history, but understand that in Him we find redemption. We need not fear proclaiming what we did in the past was simply wrong, so that today we may learn from it. We needn't fear holding up His whole truth, even if it makes our history look bad -- if we "decrease" in the eyes of others, He may still increase! We have nothing to fear in looking bad. If the Light shows our darkness, let's let the Light shine clearly so that all people can see Him!

This is a picture of that, of us standing, bruised and dirty, surrounded and "outnumbered", but holding the banner of Christ and His love. He calls us to stand for both -- for who He is, and for His love for all people. We need to remember both. If we lose our agape calling, we will end up attacking the very people Christ has died for to save. If we compromise the truth of who He is, our testimony of "love" will be corrupted and will ultimately lead us to enlist in the ranks of the attacking army (we'll end up helping the other side). We must trust that God is love, and stand firm with Him, not compromising on Him, nor compromising on His love for our enemies.

Lord, help us learn from the past! Give us eyes to see clearly and strength to stand, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

Bless you in Jesus!

Two Empires in Japan

Recently at a Christian bookstore here in Osaka I picked up a used copy of a book I had never heard of, The Two Empires in Japan by John M.L. Young. I am astounded at what I've learned in this book. A record of what had happened during the Second World War with the church in Japan was something I only knew scattered details about, but this fills in the gap for me more than I could have imagined, detailing not only the church's incredible apostasy during the war but the road that led there from the late 1800s and early 1900s through steadily increasing compromises with idolatry.

The lessons gained from this hauntingly apply not only to Christianity Japan, but have a haunting parallel to Seventh-day Adventism (which I grew up in), and also send a warning to Christianity in America as well to continually distinguish between what is God's and what is Caesar's.

I hope to write about this in the future as time permits and if God leads to do so!

Bless you in Jesus,
Ramone

What Nagasaki Means to Me

I was raised near Washington D.C. in the white majority (pretty much unaware that I was half-Mexican until 2004). I grew up pretty enamoured with our military, with our many successful wars, and believing that all of our fighting was just because we didn't start it. I went to Army-Navy surplus stores, wore camoflague clothing, tromped through the woods, watched war movies and TV dramas, and thought of one-day joining the Army or being a pilot in a fighter plane. When the first Iraq War ended and the Armed Forces decided to display their firepower by putting planes, helicopters and other military equipment on the National Mall, of course I was there taking pictures, getting soldiers' and pilots' autographs. I loved going to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, gluing together and painting model fighter jets, and seeing the yearly air show at Andrews Air Force base.

Like many other children who are raised in awe of our military, I saw the atomic bombings with a sense of wonder, even pride, at our country having been able to develop such a powerful weapon and win the war with it. I knew it caused terrible destruction with its blast and with its radiation, but I only wanted to pay attention to those things as much as I wanted to go down to the local cancer ward and see terminally ill patients. Neither I nor my family wanted to deal with that. Like every other 'patriotic' American, I thought that "loving my country" meant never saying we did anything wrong. Thinking that we were at fault in anything felt like I was being traitorous, anti-American, or cheering for the other side.

As a child, though, my sense of American righteousness was severely damaged when I read the story of Sadako Sasaki, a little girl who survived the Hiroshima bombing, but died of leukemia years later. Before she died she tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes in the hopes that the gods would grant her wish to live. I don't know if I cried when I read it, but I do now just thinking about it. Especially since I now have my own little boy, Timothy, who is almost a year and five months old.

I finally visited Hiroshima in May of 2003. I don't think I'd given much conscious thought to Hiroshima in the prior decade to that visit. Yet when a friend offered to pay for me to go, I went there with a sense of being on a pilgrimage (indeed my last name, "Romero", means "pilgrim" in Spanish). Somehow I had slowly begun to understand that there was terrible horror there, my country had caused it, and I needed to face it finally. At the museum I came face to face with the sheer fact that it was an experimental bomb, and that the city had been chosen not as a military target, but as a psychological one. A populated area was chosen instead of a strictly military target; one which also had terrain that would better "test" the effects of the experimental bomb.

My second shock came when I began to learn about Nagasaki. The footnote-like phrase I remember from my school textbooks ("A second more powerful bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later") did not tell me that Nagasaki was the historical center of Japanese Christianity, nor that Japan had a Christian history older than that of the United States. I didn't know about the thousands of martyrs that had died in Japan, and that Nagasaki became their reunion point when the country was re-opened to the world and to Christianity in the 1800s. While I knew the comical name of that second atomic bomb ("Fat Man"), I didn't know that it exploded over a church with 850 people inside. I didn't know that within one kilometer of the blast were eleven schools for children, and that they all died.

Watching this year's Nagasaki peace ceremony on TV, I heard a survivor tell of how her brother didn't want to go to school that day because he had a bad headache, but his father scolded him and made him go to school. When the bomb exploded, the family at home survived. They searched for their son for days but never found him. The city gave them a bone (as is the Buddhist custom) from a pile of the of remains of hundreds of unidentifiable schoolchildren who died in the schoolyard. How that father wished he had not sent his son to school that day... how would I feel if that were my son?

A night before the peace ceremony, I watched a new NHK documentary about the photographs of the late Joe O'Donnell, a Marine photographer who was sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For forty years he did not speak of the horrors he saw. But he finally took his photos out of his trunk and began to speak, because the faces and voices were tormenting him too terribly. His son, Tyge, has started "The Phoenix Venture" to continue the testimony for peace that his father started.

Yesterday as I watched the Nagasaki peace ceremony, I began to see a picture of the destruction and a hill in the background where the 26 martyrs were crucified. To me it represents what "Nagasaki" means to me -- a lot of things I didn't know, a lot of people just like me, and the heart of God that is necessary to see how much He loves us all, even when we were His enemies.

I know that the only way we will have any "peace" in the world is by learning to see one another through different eyes, through eyes of love and value. God saw us with those eyes, didn't He?

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:6-8

He didn't count our sins against us, but rather His Son took our sins on Himself so that we might be reconciled to Him. The only way we will have any "peace" between people on earth is by sitting still at the feet of that love, learning that the One who had right to destroy us chose instead to love us while we were His enemies. If He loved us so much, shouldn't we love one another? He died for my enemies, just like He died from me.

Help us see one another, Lord, as You see us. Help us look past our immediate feelings and whatever we've been taught. Help us forgive, help us love. Give us grace to overcome and be reconciled, in Jesus' name, amen.

*****

Two articles from years past:

"Nagasaki & Takashi Nagai" - about the Christians of the Nagasaki bombing and Takashi Nagai (2005)
"Remembering Hiroshima" - an account of the Hiroshima bombing from Christians who were there

Purpose of the Swamp of God

I haven't written on this blog in awhile, but in reading some different things on pages just now, this thought I had not long ago came to me, as well as a picture I hope to make soon.

Yes, there has been a "swamp" in Japan. Endo was mistaken, however. Endo thought the "swamp" was that Japan was not good ground for Christianity. Yes and no. Japan is good ground for Christ, but not good ground for the "ianity".

I believe God has sovereignly allowed much of this "swamp" because He is using it to help His people let go of what they don't need -- and what Japan does not need. Japan does not need a western-packaged gospel. Japan does not need to lose her soul -- she needs to know that her soul is made for Jesus, and God has set eternity in her and created her heart.

Japan needs more of Him and less of "us". God has sovereignly allowed this "swamp" to bring us (foreigners and entrenched-in-the-west Christians) to a point of repentance, to strip away what is actually keeping the gospel in a box here. We've been discouraged because Japan has not joined us in our box, but God has made Japan to fly free in Him, not to live in our box.

I was an official missionary once. But now I am more of a true "missionary" than I was before. As a foreigner and as a Christian from the west, an American, I want to begin this repentance to Japan.

We have told you that you did not know God.

You did know God deep, deep inside, even though you didn't know His name.

We tried to start from scratch. We didn't wait to hear how He was already working in you.

We came in with idea after idea, gimmick after gimmick, leader after leader, book after book, always trying to "teach" you.

We didn't water the seed that God had put in you -- we tried to plant another.

We gave you suits and neckties. We overwhelmed you with our technology and military power. We forced you open. Forgive us, Japan.

You were afraid. You wanted to protect yourselves. But we sailed in and held you at gunpoint. We held you hostage to make you trade with us. We wanted your money and goods instead of wanting you yourselves.

On top of this, we felt this was "a good opportunity" to "save your souls", so we preached the gospel after wounding you so severely. Many of you adopted our religion, but the wound was there in your heart, and you never felt like you were "coming home" to Jesus. Forgive us.

We used an experimental bomb on you twice more than necessary, and today we continue to invoke Pearl Harbor to justify it. We fire-bombed your cities. We killed your children and homes. Then we pointed to what your army had done abroad to justify ourselves.

Today we want your business. We want to sell you weapons. We want you to join our world police-force actions, even though we know it is not good for you and your relationship with your neighbors. We helped you choose peace after the war, and now we are subtly trying to move you away from it. Forgive us for trying to buy you, for trying to make you sell your conscience for better trade ties with us.

After the war, we lamented that so few of our own people answered MacArthur's call to preach the Gospel to you. We felt like we had missed an opportunity. God held us back, because He loved you so much -- He would not let His Gospel be sown with abuse as it had twice in the past.

Forgive us for using politics to try and advance our own interests and advance the gospel. Forgive us for not dealing honestly with you, not esteeming the least of you, but for going for leaders so that they could convert you en masse. Forgive us for neglecting the weak and poor among you. Forgive us for bringing a culture of materialism and a gospel of prosperity to you -- and losing the soul of the Gospel in the process, teaching you to walk with us past the poor and needy dressed in our Sunday-best on the way to "church".

Forgive us for Xavier's ways, Lord, forgive us, Japan. Forgive us for when we converted Daimyo into "Christian warlords". Forgive us for standing by in approval as they converted your people at swordpoint, as they waged war and spread "Christianity" with the sword. Forgive us for not protesting Nobunaga's terrible treatment of Buddhists.

Forgive us for thinking that our martyrdom was wholly the result of your evil, Japan, and wholly because we were righteous. Forgive us for our blindness in not seeing what we had done to you, what came with us knowingly or unknowingly.

Forgive us for forcing Christianity on you, and for forcing our traditions on you who did receive Christ. Forgive us for wounding you through our desire for your riches and your trade. Please forgive us for dropping firebombs and atomic bombs on you. Please forgive us for forcing you open with our powerful ships. Forgive us for talking about how godless you are.

Forgive us for only seeing the idolatry and spiritual oppression in your shrines and temples, and neglecting the control, idolatry and spiritual oppression in our own churches, traditions, culture and that we've brought with us to impose on you. Forgive us for trying to remove the speck from your nation while missing the planks in our eyes and in our hearts.

Lord, open our eyes to see You in Japan, and help us speak to the heart of Japan that You made for Yourself -- and help us speak the Gospel without any of "us", but only with You. Help us past the limitations of our culture, Lord. Help us see our blindspots and faults in history. Break our western "righteousness", Lord.

Forgive us, God, and forgive us, Japan. We want you to know Jesus, Japan, not us. Bend us, Lord, so that Japan may see You who love her so much.

In Jesus' name, amen.