Where Everybody's Crazy

This video has been doing the rounds of late; I was tipped off about it by an Internet forum, and then I was handed a copy of it. It asks three questions:

• Is there evidence of the Creator God in Japanese history and culture?
• Is there a connection between the Tea ceremony and Communion?
• Is it contradictory to be Japanese and a Follower of Jesus?

It focuses on the first question - hence the name of the video - but really it's laying the third question down as a big subtext. The subtext is "Should missionaries throw out Japanese culture?" Well, that one ought to be a slam-dunk, but apparently not. But let's deal with the face-value question. Is there evidence of the Creator God in Japanese history and culture?

The introduction to the film claims that the question was occasioned by some interesting reading of Romans which says that there is evidence for Creator-worship in every country and culture. No, I don't follow it either. I thought the whole "different cultures" thing came from Babel, but there you go.

Speaking of interesting readings, one of the introductory cutaways had this on the screen:

In the beginning God (Literally "gods"; ie. the Trinity) created the heavens and the earth.

I found myself involuntarily assuming my best David Tennant voice and mouthing "No, please, don't do that." (Google for "elohim" and "trinity". It's just a idiom, people. Don't get so darned excited.)

So anyhow, I'm going to spoil the secret for you. After years of painstaking research, the best they come up with is this: There is a Japanese "creator god" concept in the Kojiki, called Ame-no-minaka-no-nushi. He's one of the three uncreated gods - Oh look, three, that must be significant! - and is worshipped at the oldest shrine in Japan.

And very few Japanese people have heard of him, because he's actually a very minor figure in the Kojiki. In the Kojiki, Izanagi and Izanami and all the gods created from them do the majority of the creative work. I cannot think why this was omitted from the DVD. Only serious scholars of Shinto would have heard of Ame-no-minaka-no-nushi. If this is, per Romans, how God has made himself known to all people, He's done a really bad job of it.

But the really odd thing about this section of the film is that it just left me thinking "So what?" Because it didn't actually make any claims. Of course it would be seriously dodgy to come out and identify the three uncreated gods with the Trinity, so they just leave it as a leading question: "Could it be...?" (Expecting the answer "yes".) Sorry, but that's just a device for avoiding responsibility while at the same time playing with emotion.

I'm happy to come out and say it plain: No, they're not the Trinity. Just because you know the name of the "creator god" concept, that tells you nothing about his ontology, or character, or indeed anything, really. And so it's no wonder that the video makes no direct claims about this god. Because where do you start and where do you stop? Obviously we're not going to accept the whole Kojiki theogeny idea - heck, I believe the reason Genesis 1 was written was to provide a monotheistic creation story for the people of God, in contradistinction to the various theogenic near-Eastern creation myths that were going around at the time. And yet at the same time, we have this "three uncreated gods" idea that we desperately want to appropriate into our story, and yet we have no good way of doing so.

I'm trying to see the up-side here. I think this section of the film can give missionaries a hint as to how to communicate the concept of a creator god with people who believe the Kojiki. Let me know if you actually come across anyone like that. And, if all this is true, then such people already get the idea of a creator god anyway. Oh well.

The second section - about the tea ceremony - is trying to sit between the two questions "is there evidence of a creator god in Japan" and "is it contradictory to be Japanese and a follower of Jesus." And it does so in a very awkward way: by following on from the first section, you get the impression that you're going to find another (or, at least "an") example of how God revealed himself to the Japanese people. But unfortunately right at the beginning of the section it gives away the fact that it's actually tied more to the third question. The video comes right out and says that Sen-no-rikyu, the author of the modern tea ceremony, was influenced by Christianity. Not exactly an amazing revelation of God in the culture, I'm afraid.

The section said a lot about the Hidden Christians, and how the tea ceremony may have developed to allow the Hidden Christians to perform communion in secret. Pardon me for a moment, let me just check what the Hidden Christians believe.

One evening the Lord came down from heaven in the form of a butterly and lighted on the face of the Biruzen Maruya. At that moment he named her Santa Maruya of Korodo and flew into her mouth. Immediately she conceived... From Maruya's womb, the child heard the words both women had spoken to each other. This is why after his birth, the Lord made their words into two prayers: the Hail Mary and the Our Father. Because these prayers were both composed at the Abe River, they are called the Abe Maruya as a single unit of prayer.

Tenchi Hajimari - the Creation of Heaven and Earth

Okay. Where do we take this, then?

You see, again, I'm left thinking "So what?" There are connections between the tea ceremony and communion. And hey, there are connections between the yakuza and communion. Now what? This seems to be a massive exercise in eisegesis, like our quotation of Genesis 1. Exegesis is trying to pull things out of the text; eisegesis is trying to force things into the text. I think if you look at something as broad as the Japanese culture and something as long as Japanese culture, and if you're not prepared to give up, you will eventually find something that you're looking for. Whether it's there or not.

Which brings us to the third point. Maybe this is what the film is about: Japanese culture isn't 100% opposed to the Gospel. For people who have problems with that idea, then maybe the film is useful. But for those of us who think that Japanese people are just human beings, just plain folks like everyone else, then this won't come as a big surprise to us.

Or at least, it shouldn't.